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FRIENDS  ON  THE 


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FRIENDS   ON  THE  SHELF 


FRIENDS  ON  THE  SHELF 


BY 


BRADFORD  TORREY 


'  I  muBt  get  back  to  my  friends  on  the  shelf  " 

Edward  FitzGerakl 


BOSTON   AND  NEW   YORK 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 

1906 


'F/Y77/ 

T17 


COPYRIGHT    1906  BY   BRADFORD   TORREY 
ALL   RIGHTS   RESERVED 

Published  October  iqob 


CONTENTS 

WlIiLIAM   HaZLITT  1 

Edward  FitzGerald  43 
CThoreau  89  :> 
(  Thoreau's  Demand  upon  Nature  131  "> 
Robert  Louis  Stevenson  151 
A  Relish  of  Keats  195 
Anatole  France  227 
Verbal  Magic  275 
Quotability  289 
The  Grace  of  Obscurity  309 
In  Defense  of  the  Traveler's  Notebook         319 
Concerning  the  Lack  of  an  American  Lit- 
erature 329 


WILLIAM  HAZLITT 


WILLIAM  HAZLITT 

Happy  is  the  man  who  enjoys  himself.  His 
are  the  true  riches.  Saving  physical  pain 
and  mortal  illness,  few  evils  can  touch  him. 
He  may  lose  friends  and  make  enemies; 
all  the  powers  of  the  world  may  seem  to 
have  combined  against  him;  he  may  work 
hard  and  fare  worse;  poverty  may  sit  at 
his  table  and  share  his  bed;  but  he  is  not 
to  be  greatly  pitied.  His  good  things  are 
within.  He  enjoys  himself.  He  has  found 
the  secret  that  the  rest  of  men  are  all,  more 
or  less  consciously,  looking  for,  —  how  to 
be  happy  though  miserable.  It  seems  an 
easy  method;  nothing  could  be  less  com- 
plicated :  simply  to  enjoy  one's  own  mind. 
The  thing  is  to  do  it. 

Whether  any  one  ever  really  accom- 
plished the  miracle  for  more  than  brief 
intervals  at  once,  a  skeptic  may  doubt; 
but  some  have  believed  themselves  to  have 
accomplished  it;  and  in  questions  of  this 
intimately  personal  nature,  the  difference 


4  FRIENDS   ON   THE   SHELF 

between  faith  and  fact  is  small  and  unim- 
portant. It  is  of  the  essence  of  belief  not 
to  be  disturbed  overmuch  by  theoretical 
objections.  If  I  am  happy,  what  is  it  to  me 
that  my  busybody  of  a  neighbor  across  the 
way  has  settled  it  with  himself  that  I  am 
not  happy,  and  in  the  nature  of  the  case 
cannot  be  ?  Let  my  meddlesome  neighbor 
mind  his  own  affairs.  The  pudding  is  mine, 
not  his;  and,  with  or  without  his  leave,  the 
proof  of  the  pudding  is  in  the  eating. 

These  not  very  uncommonplace  refleo- 
lions  are  suggested  by  the  remembrance 
of  what  are  reported  to  have  been  the  last 
words  of  the  man  whose  name  stands  at 
the  head  of  this  paper.  He  was  dying 
before  his  time,  in  what  the  world,  if  it 
had  happened  to  concern  itself  about  so 
inconsiderable  an  event,  would  have  called 
rather  squalid  circumstances.  His  life  had 
mostly  been  cloudy.  The  greater  part 
of  his  fifty-two  years  had  been  spent  in 
quarreling  impartially  with  friends  and 
foes,  and,  strange  to  say  (matters  terres- 
trial being  habitually  so  out  of  joint),  the 
logical  result  had  followed.  His  domestic 
experiences,   too,   had   been   little   to   his 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT  5 

comfort  and  less  to  his  credit.  So  far  as 
women  were  concerned,  he  had  played  the 
fool  to  his  heart's  content  and  his  enemies' 
amusement.  Of  his  two  wives  (both  living), 
neither  was  now  at  his  bedside.  His  purse 
was  empty,  or  near  it.  It  was  almost  a 
question  how  he  should  be  buried.  Withal, 
as  a  man  more  than  ordinarily  ambitious, 
he  had  never  done  the  things  he  had  cared 
most  to  do ;  and  now  it  was  all  over.  And 
being  always  an  eloquent  man,  and  having 
breath  for  one  sentence  more,  he  said, 
"Well,  I  have  had  a  happy  life." 

Nor  need  it  be  assumed  that  he  was 
either  lying  or  posing.  With  abundance 
of  misfortune  and  no  lack  of  disappoint- 
ment, with  outward  things  working  pretty 
unanimously  against  him,  he  had  enjoyed 
himself.  In  a  word,  he  remained  to  the  last 
what  he  had  been  from  the  first,  a  sentimen- 
talist; and  a  sentimentalist,  like  a  Chris- 
tian, has  joys  that  the  world  knows  not  of. 

For  a  sentimentalist  is  one  who,  more 
than  the  majority  of  his  fellows,  cultivates 
and  relishes  his  emotions.  They  are  the 
chief  of  his  living,  the  choicest  of  his  crop, 
his  "best  of  dearest  and  his  only  care;" 


6  FRIENDS   ON   THE   SHELF 

as  why  should  they  not  be,  since  they  give 
him  the  most  of  what  he  most  desires? 
Perhaps  we  should  all  be  sentimentalists 
if  we  could.  As  it  is,  the  number  of  such 
is  relatively  small,  though  even  at  that  they 
may  be  said  to  be  of  various  kinds,  as  their 
emotions  are  excited  by  various  classes  of 
objects. 

If  a  man's  nature  is  religious,  his  sen- 
timentalism,  supposing  him  to  have  been 
born  with  that  gift,  naturally  takes  on  a 
religious  turn;  he  treasures  the  luxury  of 
contrition  and  the  raptures  of  assured 
forgiveness.  Like  one  of  the  earliest  and 
most  celebrated  of  his  kind,  he  can  feed 
day  and  night  upon  tears,  —  having  plen- 
tiful occasion,  perhaps,  for  such  a  watery 
diet,  —  and  be  the  more  ecstatic  in  pro- 
portion as  he  sounds  more  and  more  deeply 
the  unfathomable  depths  of  his  unworthi- 
ness.  This,  in  part  at  least,  is  what  is  meant 
by  the  current  phrase,  "enjoying  religion." 
Devotional  literature  bears  unbroken  wit- 
ness to  its  reality  and  fervors,  from  the 
Psalms  of  David  down  to  the  '*  Lives  of 
the  Saints"  and  the  diaries  of  latter-day 
Methodism.    There  is  nothing  sweeter  to 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT  7 

the  finer  sorts  of  human  nature  than  devo- 
tional self-effacement,  whether  it  be  sought 
as  Nirvana  in  the  silence  of  a  Buddhist's 
cell,  or  as  a  gift  of  special  grace  in  a  tu- 
multuous chorus  of  "Oh,  to  be  nothing, 
nothing,"  at  a  crowded  conventicle.  Small 
wonder  that  the 

"willing  soul  would  stay 
In  such  a  frame  as  this, 
And  sit  and  sing  itself  away 
To  everlasting  bliss." 

Small  wonder,  surely;  for,  say  what  you 
will  (and  the  remark  is  not  half  so  much  a 
truism  as  it  sounds),  one  of  the  surest  ways 
to  be  happy  is  to  have  happy  feelings. 

This  cultivation  of  the  religious  sensi- 
bilities is  probably  the  commonest,  as  at 
its  best  it  is  certainly  the  noblest  form  of 
what,  meaning  no  offense,  —  though  the 
word  has  been  in  bad  company,  and  will 
never  recover  from  the  smirch,  —  we  have 
called  sentimentalism.  But  there  are  other 
forms,  suited  to  other  grades  of  human 
capacity,  for  all  men  are  not  saints. 

There  is,  for  example,  especially  in  these 
modern  times,  a  purely  poetic  suscepti- 
bility to  the  charms  of  the  natural  world; 


8  FRIENDS   ON   THE  SHELF 

so  that  the  favored  subject  of  it,  not  every 
day,  to  be  sure,  but  as  often  as  the  mood  is 
upon  him,  shall  experience  joys  ineffable, 

"  Trances  of  thought  and  mountings  of  the  mind," 

at  the  sight  of  an  ordinary  landscape  or 
the  meanest  of  common  flowers. 

Of  a  much  lower  sort  is  the  sentimental- 
ism  of  such  a  man  as  Sterne ;  a  something 
not  poetical,  only  half  real,  a  kind  of  rhe- 
torical trick,  never  so  neatly  done,  but  still 
a  trick,  and  whatever  of  genuine  feeling 
there  is  in  it  so  alloyed  with  baser  metal 
that  even  while  you  enjoy  to  the  very  mar- 
row the  amazing  perfection  of  the  writing 
(for  it  would  be  hard  to  name  another  book 
in  which  there  are  so  many  perfect  sen- 
tences to  the  page  as  in  the  "Sentimental 
Journey  "),  —  even  while  you  feel  all  this, 
you  feel  also  what  a  relief  it  would  be  to 
speak  a  piece  of  your  mind  to  the  smirk- 
ing, winking,  face-making  clergyman,  who 
has  such  pretty  feelings,  and  makes  such 
incomparably  pretty  copy  out  of  them, 
but  who  will  by  no  means  allow  you  to  for- 
get that  he,  as  well  as  another,  is  a  man  of 
flesh  and  blood  (especially  flesh),  knowing 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT  9 

a  thing  or  two  of  the  world  in  spite  of  his 
cloth,  and  able,  if  he  only  would  (though 
of  course  he  won't),  to  play  the  rake  as 
handsomely  as  the  next  man.  A  strange 
candidate  for  holy  orders  he  surely  was, 
even  in  a  country  where  a  parish  is  frankly 
recognized  as  a  "living"!  It  is  a  comfort 
to  be  assured,  on  the  high  authority  of  Mr. 
Bagehot,  that  the  only  respect  in  which  he 
resembled  a  clergyman  of  our  own  time 
was,  that  he  lost  his  voice  and  traveled 
abroad  to  find  it. 

And  once  more,  not  to  refine  upon  the 
point  unduly,  there  are  such  men  as 
Rousseau  and  Hazlitt;  not  great  poets, 
like  Wordsworth,  nor  mere  professional 
dealers  in  the  pathetic,  like  Sterne,  but 
men  of  literary  genius  very  exceptionally 
endowed  with  the  dangerous  gift  of  sen- 
sibility; which  gift,  wisely  or  unwisely, 
they  have  nourished  and  made  the  most  of, 
first  for  their  own  exquisite  pleasure  in  it, 
and  afterward,  it  may  well  be,  for  the  sake 
of  its  very  considerable  value  as  a  literary 
"asset." 

Rousseau  and  Hazlitt,  we  say;  for 
though  the  two  are  in  some  respects  greatly 


10  FRIENDS   ON   THE   SHELF 

unlike,  they  are  plainly  of  the  same  school. 
For  better  or  worse,  the  English  boy 
came  early  under  the  Frenchman's  influ- 
ence, and,  to  his  credit  be  it  spoken,  he 
was  never  slow  to  acknowledge  the  debt 
thus  incurred.  His  passion  for  the  "New 
Eloise"  was  in  time  outgrown,  but  the 
"Confessions"  he  "never  tired  of."  He 
loved  to  run  over  in  memory  the  dearer 
parts  of  them:  Rousseau's  "first  meeting 
with  Madame  Warens,  the  pomp  of  sound 
with  which  he  has  celebrated  her  name, 
beginning  'Louise-Eleonore  de  Warens 
etait  une  demoiselle  de  La  Tour  de  Pil, 
noble  et  ancienne  famille  de  Vevai,  ville 
du  pays  de  Vaud'  (sounds  which  we  still 
tremble  to  repeat) ;  his  description  of  her 
person,  her  angelic  smile,  her  mouth  of 
the  size  of  his  own;  his  walking  out  one 
day  while  the  bells  were  chiming  to  ves- 
pers, and  anticipating  in  a  sort  of  waking 
dream  the  life  he  afterward  led  with  her, 
in  which  months  and  years,  and  life  itself, 
passed  away  in  undisturbed  felicity;  the 
sudden  disappointment  of  his  hopes;  his 
transport  thirty  years  after  at  seeing  the 
same  flower  which  they  had  brought  home 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT  11 

together  from  one  of  their  rambles  near 
Chambery;  his  thoughts  in  that  long  inter- 
val of  time;  his  suppers  with  Grimm  and 
Diderot  after  he  came  to  Paris;  .  .  .  hia 
literary  projects,  his  fame,  his  misfortunes, 
his  unhappy  temper;  his  last  solitary  retire- 
ment on  the  lake  and  island  of  Bienne,  with 
his  dog  and  his  boat;  his  reveries  and 
delicious  musings  there  —  all  these  crowd 
into  our  minds  with  recollections  which 
we  do  not  choose  to  express.  There  are 
no  passages  in  the  'New  Eloise'  of  equal 
force  and  beauty  with  the  best  descrip- 
tions in  the  'Confessions,'  if  we  except 
the  excursion  on  the  water,  Julie's  last 
letter  to  St.  Preux,  and  his  letter  to  her, 
recalling  the  days  of  their  first  love.  We 
spent  two  whole  years  in  reading  these 
two  works,  and  (gentle  reader,  it  was  when 
we  were  young)  in  shedding  tears  over 
them, 

'as  fast  as  the  Arabian  trees 
Their  medicinal  gums.' 

They  were  the  happiest  years  of  our  life. 
We  may  well  say  of  them,  sweet  is  the  dew 
of  their  memory,  and  pleasant  the  balm  of 
their  recollection!" 


12  FRIENDS   ON   THE   SHELF 

The  whole  passage  is  characteristic  and 
illuminating.  Hazlitt  is  speaking  of  an- 
other, but  as  writers  will  and  must,  whether 
they  mean  it  or  not,  he  is  disclosing  him- 
self. The  boyish  reader's  tears,  the  grown 
man's  trembling  at  the  sound  of  the  elo- 
quent French  words,  and  the  confession 
of  the  concluding  sentence  (which  he 
repeated  word  for  word  years  afterward 
in  the  essay,  "On  Reading  Old  Books") 

—  here  we  have  the  real  Hazlitt,  or  rather 
one  of  the  real  Hazlitts. 

He  was  strong  in  memory.  His  very 
darkest  times — and  they  were  dark  enough 

—  he  could  brighten  with  sunny  recollec- 
tions: of  a  painting,  it  might  be,  seen 
twenty  years  before,  and  loved  ever  since; 
of  a  favorite  actor  in  a  favorite  part;  of 
a  book  read  in  his  youth  ("the  greatest 
pleasure  in  life  is  that  of  reading,  while 
we  are  young");  of  the  birds  that  flitted 
about  his  path  in  happier  mornings;  of  the 
taste  of  frost-bitten  barberries  eaten  thirty 
years  before,  when  he  was  five  years  old,  on 
the  side  of  King-Oak  Hill,  in  Weymouth,^ 

*  In  this  Old   Colony  town,   though   none  of  his   English 
biographers  appear  to  know  it,  the  boy  Hazlitt  lived  in  the  Old 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT  13 

Massachusetts,  and  never  tasted  since;  of 
the  tea-gardens  at  Walworth,  to  which  his 
father  used  to  take  him.  Oh  yes,  he  can 
see  those  gardens  still,  though  he  no  longer 
visits  them.  He  has  only  to  "unlock  the 
casket  of  memory,"  and  a  new  sense  comes 
over  him,  as  in  a  dream;  his  eyes  "  dazzle," 
his  sensations  are  all  "glossy,  spruce, 
voluptuous,  and  fine."  Wliat  luscious  ad- 
jectives! And  how  shamelessly,  like  an 
innocent,  sweet-toothed  child,  he  rolls 
them  under  his  tongue !  Their  goodness  is 
inexpressible.  But  listen  to  him  for  an- 
other sentence  or  two,  and  see  what  a  favor 
of  Providence  it  is  for  a  writer  of  essays  to 
be  a  lover  of  his  own  feelings:  "I  see  the 
beds  of  larkspur  with  purple  eyes;  tall 
hollyhocks,  red  or  yellow;  the  broad  sun- 
flowers, caked  in  gold,  with  bees  buzzing 
round  them;  wildernesses  of  pinks,  and 
hot,  glowing  peonies ;  poppies  run  to  seed ; 

North  Parsonage,  in  which  had  lived  some  time  before  a  girl 
named  Abigail  Smith,  afterward  better  known  as  Abigail 
Adams,  wife  of  the  second  President  of  the  United  States, 
and  mother  of  the  sixth.  For  which  fact,  more  interesting  to 
him  than  to  his  readers,  it  is  to  be  feared,  the  present  writer  is 
indebted  to  the  researches  of  his  old  Weymouth  schoolmate, 
now  President  of  the  Weymouth  Historical  Society,  Mr.  John  J. 
Loud. 


14  FRIENDS   ON   THE   SHELF 

the  sugared  lily,  and  faint  mignonette,  all 
ranged  in  order,  and  as  thick  as  they  can 
grow;  the  box-tree  borders;  the  gravel 
walks,  the  painted  alcove,  the  confection- 
ery, the  clotted  cream: — I  think  I  see 
them  now  with  sparkling  looks;  or  have 
they  vanished  while  I  have  been  writing 
this  description  of  them  ?  No  matter;  they 
will  return  again  when  I  least  think  of 
them.  All  that  I  have  observed  since  of 
flowers  and  plants  and  grass-plots  seem 
to  me  borrowed  from  'that  first  garden 
of  my  innocence '  —  to  be  slips  and  scions 
stolen  from  that  bed  of  memory." 

How  eloquent  he  grows!  "Slips  and 
scions  stolen  from  that  bed  of  memory!" 
The  very  words,  simple  as  they  are,  and 
homely  as  is  their  theme,  throb  with  emo- 
tion, and  move  as  if  to  music.  "Most  elo- 
quent of  English  essayists,"  his  latest 
biographer  pronounces  him;  and,  whether 
we  agree  with  the  judgment  or  not  (sweep- 
ing assertions  cost  little,  and  contribute 
to  readability),  at  least  we  recognize  the 
quality  that  the  biographer  has  in  mind. 

A  sentimentalist,  of  all  men,  knows  how 
to  live  his  good  days  over  again.   Pleasure, 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT  15 

to  his  thrifty  way  of  thinking,  is  not  a 
thing  to  be  enjoyed  once,  and  so  done 
with.  He  will  eat  his  cake  and  have  it 
too.  Nor  shall  it  be  the  mere  shadow  of  a 
feast.  Nay,  if  there  is  to  be  any  difference 
to  speak  of,  the  second  serving  shall  be 
better  and  more  substantial  than  the  first. 
To  him  nothing  else  is  quite  so  real  as  the 
past.  He  rejoices  in  it  as  in  an  unchange- 
able, indefeasible  possession.  "The  past 
at  least  is  secure."  If  the  present  hour  is 
dark  and  lonely  and  friendless,  he  has  only 
to  run  back  and  walk  again  in  sunny, 
flower-bespangled  fields,  hand  in  hand 
with  his  own  boyhood. 

Such  was  Hazlitt's  practice  as  a  senti- 
mental economist,  and  it  would  take  an 
unusually  bold  Philistine,  we  think,  to 
maintain  that  it  was  altogether  a  bad  one. 
The  words  that  he  wrote  of  Rousseau  are 
applicable  to  himself:  "He  seems  to 
gather  up  the  past  moments  of  his  being 
like  drops  of  honey-dew  to  distil  a  precious 
liquor  from  them."  To  vary  a  phrase  of 
Mr.  Pater's,  he  is  a  master  in  the  art  of 
impassioned  recollection. 

It  makes  little  difference  where  he  is,  or 


16  FRIENDS   ON   THE   SHELF 

what  circumstance  sets  him  going.  He 
may  be  among  the  Alps.  "Clarens  is  on 
my  left,"  he  says,  "the  Dent  de  Jamant  is 
behind  me,  the  rocks  of  Meillerie  oppo- 
site :  under  my  feet  is  a  green  bank,  enam- 
elled with  white  and  purple  flowers,  in 
which  a  dewdrop  here  and  there  glitters 
with  pearly  light.  Intent  upon  the  scene 
and  upon  the  thoughts  that  stir  within 
me,  I  conjure  up  the  cheerful  passages  of 
my  life,  and  a  crowd  of  happy  images  ap- 
pear before  me."  Or  he  is  in  London,  and 
hears  the  tinkle  of  the  "Letter-Bell"  as  it 
passes.  "It  strikes  upon  the  ear,  it  vibrates 
to  the  brain,  it  wakes  me  from  the  dream 
of  time,  it  flings  me  back  upon  my  first 
entrance  into  life,  the  period  of  my  first 
coming  up  to  town,  when  all  around  was 
strange,  uncertain,  adverse,  —  a  hubbub 
of  confused  noises,  a  chaos  of  shifting 
objects,  —  and  when  this  sound  alone, 
startling  me  with  the  recollection  of  a  letter 
I  had  to  send  to  the  friends  I  had  lately 
left,  brought  me  as  it  were  to  myself,  made 
me  feel  that  I  had  links  still  connecting 
me  with  the  universe,  and  gave  me  hope 
and  patience  to  persevere.    At  that  loud- 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT  17 

tinkling,  interrupted  sound,  the  long  line 
of  blue  hills  near  the  place  where  I  was 
brought  up  waves  in  the  horizon,  a  golden 
sunset  hovers  over  them,  the  dwarf  oaks 
rustle  their  red  leaves  in  the  evening 
breeze,  and  the  road  from  Wem  to  Shrews- 
bury, by  which  I  first  set  out  on  my  jour- 
ney through  life,  stares  me  in  the  face 
as  plain,  but,  from  time  and  change,  as 
visionary  and  mysterious,  as  the  pictures 
in  the  'Pilgrim's  Progress.'" 

"When  a  man  has  arrived  at  a  certain 
ripeness  in  intellect,"  says  Keats,  "any 
one  grand  and  spiritual  passage  serves 
him  as  a  starting-post  towards  all  'the 
two-and-thirty  Palaces.'"  Yes,  and  some 
men  will  go  a  good  way  on  the  same  royal 
road,  with  no  more  spiritual  incitement 
than  the  passing  of  the  postman. 

How  fondly  Hazlitt  recalls  the  day  of 
days  when  he  met  Coleridge,  and  walked 
with  him  six  miles  homeward;  when  "the 
very  milestones  had  ears,  and  Hamer  Hill 
stooped  with  all  its  pines,  to  listen  to  a  poet 
as  he  passed."  At  the  sixth  milepost  man 
and  boy  separated.  "On  my  way  back," 
says  Hazlitt,  "  I  had  a  sound  in  my  ears  — • 


18  FRIENDS   ON  THE   SHELF 

it  was  the  voice  of  Fancy ;  I  had  a  light  be- 
fore me  —  it  was  the  face  of  Poetry."  A 
second  meeting  had  been  agreed  upon,  and 
meanwhile  the  boy's  soul  was  possessed 
by  "an  uneasy,  pleasurable  sensation," 
thinking  of  what  was  in  store  for  him. 
"During  those  months  the  chill  breath  of 
winter  gave  me  a  welcoming;  the  vernal 
air  was  balm  and  inspiration  to  me.  The 
golden  sunsets,  the  silver  star  of  evening, 
lighted  me  on  my  way  to  new  hopes  and 
prospects.  /  was  to  visit  Coleridge  in  the 
spring.'' 

Verily,  the  words  of  the  dying  man  begin 
to  sound  less  paradoxical.  He  had  been 
happy.  If  his  buffetings  and  disappoint- 
ments had  been  more  than  fall  to  the  lot 
of  average  humanity,  so  had  been  his  joys 
and  his  triumphs.  He  had  more  capacity 
for  joy.  Therein,  in  great  part,  lay  his 
genius.  To  borrow  a  good  word  from 
Jeremy  Taylor,  all  his  perceptions  were 
"quick  and  full  of  relish."  Even  his  sor- 
rows, once  they  were  far  enough  behind 
him,  became  only  a  purer  and  more 
ethereal  kind  of  bliss.  So  he  tells  us,  in  one 
of  his  later  essays,  how  he  loved  best  of  all 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT  19 

to  He  whole  mornings  on  a  sunny  bank 
on  Salisbury  Plain,  with  no  object  before 
him,  neither  knowing  nor  caring  how  the 
time  passed,  his  thoughts  floating  like 
motes  before  his  half-shut  eyes,  or  some 
image  of  the  past  rushing  by  him  — 
"Diana  and  her  fawn,  and  all  the  glories 
of  the  antique  world."  "Then,"  he  adds, 
"I  start  away  to  prevent  the  iron  from 
entering  my  soul,  and  let  fall  some  tears 
into  that  stream  of  time  which  separates 
me  farther  and  farther  from  all  I  once 
loved."  Whether  the  tears  were  physical 
or  metaphorical,  whether  they  wet  the 
cheek  or  only  the  printed  page,  the  man 
who  shed  them  is  not,  on  their  account, 
to  be  regarded  as  an  object  of  commisera- 
tion. Sadness  that  can  be  thus  described, 
in  words  so  like  the  fabled  nightingale's 
song,  "most  musical,  most  melancholy," 
is  more  to  be  desired  than  much  that  goes 
by  the  name  of  pleasure,  and  the  deeper 
and  more  poignant  the  emotion,  the  more 
precious  are  its  returns. 

Nobody  ever  understood  this  better 
than  Hazlitt.  His  sentimentalism,  as  we 
call  it,  was  no  ignorant,  superficial  gift  of 


20  FRIENDS   ON  THE   SHELF 

young-ladyish  sensibility.  It  had  intellect- 
ual foundations.  He  felt  because  he  knew. 
He  had  been  intimate  with  himself;  he 
had  cherished  his  own  consciousness.  He 
remarks  somewhere  that  the  three  perfect 
egotists  of  the  race  were  Rousseau,  Words- 
worth, and  Benvenuto  Cellini.  He  would 
defy  the  world,  he  said,  to  name  a  fourth. 
But  he  might  easily  enough  have  named 
the  fourth  himself,  had  not  modesty  — 
or  something  else  —  prevented.  If  he  had 
lived  longer,  he  would  perhaps  have  writ- 
ten the  fourth  man's  autobiography;  his 
formal  autobiography,  that  is  to  say.  In 
fact,  though  not  in  name,  he  had  already 
written  it;  some  might  be  ready  to  main- 
tain (but  they  would  be  wrong)  that  he 
had  written  little  else.  By  "egotism"  he 
meant  not  selfishness  in  the  more  ordinary, 
mercantile  acceptation  of  the  word,  — a 
lack  of  benevolence,  an  extravagant  desire 
to  be  better  off  than  others  in  the  way  of 
worldly  "goods,"  — but  the  very  quality 
we  have  been  trying  to  show  forth:  ab- 
sorption in  one's  own  mind,  a  profound 
and  perpetual  consciousness  of  one's  own 
being,  the  habit  of  interfusing  self  and  out- 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT  21 

ward  things  till  distinctions  of  spirit  and 
matter,  finite  and  infinite,  self  and  the 
universe,  are  for  the  moment  almost  done 
away  with,  and  feeling  is  all  in  all. 

This,  or  something  like  this,  was  Haz- 
litt's  secret.  This  is  the  breath  of  life  that 
throbs  in  the  best  of  his  pages.  Wliatever 
subject  he  handled,  a  prize-fight,  a  game 
of  fives,  a  juggler's  trick,  a  play  of  Shake- 
speare, a  picture  of  Titian,  the  pleasure  of 
painting,  he  did  it  not  simply  con  ajnore, 
or,  as  his  newer  critics  say,  with  gusto  (the 
word  is  Hazlitt's  own  —  he  wrote  an  essay 
about  it),  but  as  if  the  thing  were  for  the 
time  being  part  and  parcel  of  himself.  And 
so,  oftener  than  is  commonly  to  be  ex- 
pected of  essay-writers,  his  sentences  are 
not  so  much  vivid  as  alive. 

More  than  most  men,  he  was  alive  him- 
self. In  Keats's  phrase,  he  felt  existence. 
There  was  no  telling  its  preciousness  to 
him.  The  essay  "On  the  Feeling  of  Im- 
mortality in  Youth,"  though  at  the  end  it 
breaks  out  despairingly  into  something 
like  the  old  cry,  Vanitas  vanitatum,  is  filled 
to  the  brim  with  a  passionate  love  of  this 
present  world.     The  idea  of  leaving  it  is 


22  FRIENDS   ON  THE   SHELF 

abhorrent  to  him.  To  think  what  he  has 
been,  and  what  he  has  enjoyed,  in  those 
good  days  of  his;  days  when  he  "looked 
for  hours  at  a  Rembrandt  without  being 
conscious  of  the  flight  of  time;"  days  of 
the  "full,  pulpy  feeling  of  youth,  tasting 
existence  and  every  object  in  it."  What 
a  bliss  to  be  young!  Then  life  is  new, 
and,  for  all  we  know  of  it,  endless.  As  for 
old  age  and  death,  they  are  no  concern  of 
ours.  "Like  a  rustic  at  a  fair,  we  are  full 
of  amazement  and  rapture,  and  have  no 
thought  of  going  home,  or  that  it  will  soon 
be  night."  Sentences  like  this  must  have 
been  what  Keats  had  in  mind  when  he 
spoke  so  lovingly  of  "distilled  prose;" 
prose  that  bears  repetition  and  brooding 
over,  like  exquisite  verse.  Some  sentences, 
indeed,  are  better  than  whole  books,  and 
this  of  Hazlitt's  is  one  of  them;  as  fine, 
almost,  —  as  purely  "distilled,"  —  as  that 
famous  kindred  one  of  Sir  William  Temple : 
"When  all  is  done,  human  life  is,  at  the 
greatest  and  the  best,  but  like  a  froward 
child,  that  must  be  played  with  and  hu- 
mored a  little  to  keep  it  quiet  till  it  falls 
asleep,  and  then  the  care  is  over." 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT  23 

And  since  we  are  quoting  (and  few  au- 
thors invite  quotation  more  than  HazKtt, 
as  few  have  themselves  quoted  more  con- 
stantly), let  us  please  ourselves  with  another 
sentence  from  the  same  essay,  —  a  page- 
long  roll-call  of  a  sentimental  man's  beati- 
tudes, turning  at  the  close  to  a  sudden 
blackness  of  darkness :  — 

*'To  see  the  golden  sun,  the  azure  sky, 
the  outstretched  ocean;  to  walk  upon  the 
green  earth,  and  be  lord  of  a  thousand 
creatures;  to  look  down  yawning  preci- 
pices or  over  distant  sunny  vales;  to  see 
the  world  spread  out  under  one's  feet  on  a 
map;  to  bring  the  stars  near;  to  view  the 
smallest  insects  through  a  microscope;  to 
read  history,  and  consider  the  revolutions 
of  empire  and  the  successions  of  gener- 
ations; to  hear  of  the  glory  of  Tyre,  of 
Sidon,  of  Babylon,  and  of  Susa,  and  to  say 
all  these  were  before  me  and  are  now  no- 
thing; to  say  I  exist  in  such  a  point  of  time 
and  in  such  a  point  of  space;  to  be  a  spec- 
tator and  a  part  of  its  ever-moving  scene; 
to  witness  the  change  of  season,  of  spring 
and  autumn,  of  winter  and  summer;  to 
feel   heat   and    cold,    pleasure    and    pain, 


24  FRIENDS   ON   THE   SHELF 

beauty  and  deformity,  right  and  wrong; 
to  be  sensible  to  the  accidents  of  nature; 
to  consider  the  mighty  world  of  eye  and 
ear;  to  listen  to  the  stock-dove's  notes 
amid  the  forest  deep;  to  journey  over 
moor  and  mountain;  to  hear  the  midnight 
sainted  choir;  to  visit  lighted  halls,  or  the 
cathedral's  gloom,  or  sit  in  crowded  thea- 
tres and  see  life  itself  mocked ;  to  study  the 
works  of  art  and  refine  the  sense  of  beauty 
to  agony;  to  worship  fame,  and  to  dream 
of  immortality;  to  look  upon  the  Vatican, 
and  to  read  Shakespeare;  to  gather  up  the 
wisdom  of  the  ancients,  and  to  pry  into 
the  future;  to  listen  to  the  trump  of  war, 
the  shout  of  victory;  to  question  history  as 
to  the  movements  of  the  human  heart;  to 
seek  for  truth;  to  plead  the  cause  of  hu- 
manity; to  overlook  the  world  as  if  time 
and  nature  poured  their  treasures  at  our 
feet  —  to  be  and  to  do  all  this,  and  then  in 
a  moment  to  be  nothing!" 

"To  look  upon  the  Vatican,  and  to 
read  Shakespeare!"  Once  more  we  are 
reminded  of  Keats,  a  man  very  differ- 
ent from  Hazlitt  in  many  ways,  but,  like 
him,  "a  near  neighbor  to  himself,"  and 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT  26 

a  worshiper  of  beauty.  '*  Things  real," 
says  Keats,  "such  as  existences  of  sun, 
moon  and  stars  —  and  passages  of  Shake- 
speare." 

Hazhtt's  nature  was  peculiarly  intense, 
with  the  very  slightest  admixture  of  those 
saner  and  commoner  elements  that  keep 
our  poor  humanity,  in  its  ordinary  mani- 
festations, comparatively  reasonable  and 
sweet.  His  years,  from  what  we  read  of 
them,  seem  to  have  passed  in  one  long  state 
of  feverishness.  He  cannot  have  been  a 
pleasant  man  either  for  himself  or  for 
any  one  else  to  live  with.  Self-absorbed, 
irascible,  and  proud,  with  little  or  no  gift 
of  humor  (sentimentalists  as  a  class  seem 
to  be  deficient  in  this  quality,  the  case  of 
Sterne  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding; 
and  Sterne's  humor  is  perhaps  only  an 
additional  reason  for  suspecting  that  his 
fine  sentiments  were  mostly  literary),  he 
had  a  splendid  capacity  for  hating,  and 
was  possessed  of  a  kind  of  ugly  courage 
that  made  it  easy  for  him  to  speak  with 
extraordinary  plainness  of  other  men's 
defects.  If  the  men  happened  to  be  his 
friends,  so  much  the  better.    He  professed, 


26  FRIENDS   ON  THE   SHELF 

indeed,  to  like  a  friend  all  the  more  for 
having  "faults  that  one  could  talk  about." 
"Put  a  pen  in  his  hand,"  says  Mr.  Birrell, 
"and  he  would  say  anything."  Whatever 
he  said  or  did,  suffered  or  enjoyed,  it  was 
all  with  a  kind  of  passion.  As  the  common 
saying  is,  there  was  no  halfway  work  with 
him.  It  could  never  be  complained  of  him, 
as  he  complained  of  some  other  writer,  that 
his  sentences  wanted  impetus.  He  under- 
stood the  value  of  surprise,  and  never 
balked  at  an  extreme  statement.  Thus  he 
would  say,  in  the  coolest  manner  imagin- 
able, "It  is  utterly  impossible  to  persuade 
an  editor  that  he  is  nobody."  As  if  it  really 
were!  As  if  it  were  not  ten  times  nearer 
impossible  to  persuade  a  contributor  that 
he  is  nobody! 

On  his  way  to  the  famous  prize-fight, — 
famous  because  he  was  there,  —  spending 
the  night  at  an  inn  crowded  with  the 
"Fancy,"  he  overheard  a  "tall  English 
yeoman"  holding  forth  to  those  about  him 
concerning  "rent,  and  taxes,  and  the  price 
of  corn."  One  of  his  hearers  ventured  at 
a  certain  point  to  interpose  an  objection, 
whereupon  the  yeoman  bore  down  upon 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT  27 

him  with  the  word,  "Confound  it,  man, 
don't  be  insipid."  "Thinks  I  to  myself," 
says  HazHtt,  "that's  a  good  phrase."  And 
so  it  was,  and  quite  in  his  own  hne.  "There 
is  no  surfeiting  on  gall,"  he  remarks  some- 
where, with  admirable  truth.  He  wrote  an 
essay  upon  "  Cant  and  Hypocrisy,"  another 
upon  "  Disagreeable  People,"  and  another 
upon  the  "  Pleasure  of  Hating."  And  he 
knew  whereof  he  spake.  Sentimentalism 
— the  Hazlitt  brand  of  it,  at  any  rate  — is 
nothing  like  sweetened  water.  "If  any  one 
wishes  to  see  me  quite  calm,"  he  says,  in 
his  emphatic  manner,  "they  may  cheat  me 
in  a  bargain,  or  tread  upon  my  toes ;  but  a 
truth  repelled,  a  sophism  repeated,  totally 
disconcerts  me,  and  I  lose  all  patience.  I 
am  not,  in  the  ordinary  acceptation  of  the 
term,  a  good-natured  man."  "Lamb,"  he 
once  remarked,  "yearns  after  and  covets 
what  soothes  the  frailty  of  human  nature." 
So  did  not  Hazlitt.  Lamb  delighted  in 
people  as  such.  Even  their  foibles  — espe- 
cially their  foibles,  it  would  be  truer  to  say 
— were  pleasant  to  him.  In  short,  he  was 
a  humorist.  Hazlitt's  first  interest,  on  the 
other  hand,  seems  to  have  been  in  places 


28  FRIENDS   ON   THE   SHELF 

and  tilings,  —  including  books  and  pic- 
tures, —  and  his  own  thoughts  about  them. 
Of  human  beings  he  liked  personages,  so 
called,  men  who  have  done  something,  — 
actors,  painters,  authors,  statesmen,  and 
the  like.  As  for  the  common  run  of  his 
foolish  fellow  mortals,  if  their  frailties 
were  to  be  stroked,  by  all  means  let  it  be 
done  the  wrong  way.  The  operation  might 
be  less  acceptable  to  the  patient,  but  it 
would  probably  do  him  more  good,  and 
would  certainly  be  more  amusing  to  the 
operator  and  the  lookers-on. 

No  doubt  the  man  experienced  now  and 
then  a  reaction  from  his  prevailing  con- 
dition of  feverishness.  He  must  have 
had  moods,  we  may  guess,  when  he  saw 
the  beauty  and  comfort  of  a  quieter  way 
of  life.  Indeed,  he  has  left  one  inimitable 
portrait  of  a  character  the  exact  reverse  of 
his  own,  a  portrait  drawn  not  bitterly  nor 
grudgingly,  but  in  something  not  alto- 
gether unlike  the  affectionately  quizzical 
spirit  of  Lamb  himself.  He  calls  it  the 
character  of  a  bookworm. 

"The  person  1  mean,"  he  says,  "has 
an  admiration  for  learning,  if  he  is  only 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT  29 

dazzled  by  its  light.  He  lives  among  old 
authors,  if  he  does  not  enter  much  into 
their  spirit.  He  handles  the  covers,  and 
turns  over  the  page,  and  is  familiar  with 
the  names  and  dates.  He  is  busy  and  self- 
involved.  He  hangs  like  a  film  and  cob- 
web upon  letters,  or  is  like  the  dust  upon 
the  outside  of  knowledge,  which  should 
not  be  rudely  brushed  aside.  He  follows 
learning  as  its  shadow;  but  as  such,  he  is 
respectable.  He  browses  on  the  husk  and 
leaves  of  books,  as  the  young  fawn  browses 
on  the  bark  and  leaves  of  trees.  Such  a 
one  lives  all  his  life  in  a  dream  of  learning, 
and  has  never  once  had  his  sleep  broken 
by  a  real  sense  of  things.  He  believes 
implicitly  in  genius,  truth,  virtue,  liberty, 
because  he  finds  the  names  of  these  things 
in  books.  He  thinks  that  love  and  friend- 
ship are  the  finest  things  imaginable,  both 
in  practice  and  theory.  The  legend  of 
good  women  is  to  him  no  fiction.^  When 
he  steals  from  the  twilight  of  his  cell,  the 
scene  breaks  upon  him  like  an  illuminated 
missal,  and  all  the  people  he  sees  are  but 
so  many  figures  in  a  camera  ohscura.    He 

*  As  it  was  to  Solomon  and,  by  this  time,  to  William  Hazlitt. 


so  FRIENDS   ON  THE   SHELF 

reads  the  world,  like  a  favorite  volume, 
only  to  find  beauties  in  it,  or  like  an  edition 
of  some  old  work  which  he  is  preparing 
for  the  press,  only  to  make  emendations 
in  it,  and  correct  the  errors  that  have  inad- 
vertently slipt  in.  He  and  his  dog  Tray 
are  much  the  same  honest,  simple-hearted, 
faithful,  affectionate  creatures  —  if  Tray 
could  but  read !  His  mind  cannot  take  the 
impression  of  vice;  but  the  gentleness  of 
his  nature  turns  gall  to  milk.  He  would 
not  hurt  a  fly.  He  draws  the  picture  of 
mankind  from  the  guileless  simplicity  of 
his  own  heart;  and  when  he  dies,  his  spirit 
will  take  its  smiling  leave,  without  ever 
having  had  an  ill  thought  of  others,  or  the 
consciousness  of  one  in  itself!" 

It  would  have  been  for  Hazlitt's  happi- 
ness, or  at  least  for  his  comfort,  if  he  had 
possessed  a  grain  or  two  of  his  bookworm's 
"guileless  simplicity."  But  things  must  be 
as  they  must.  His  name  was  not  Nathan- 
ael.  He  was  "dowered  with  the  hate  of 
hate,  the  scorn  of  scorn,"  and  it  was  not 
in  his  nature  to  be  patient  and  easy-going, 
especially  where  anything  so  vitally  essen- 
tial  as   a   difference   of  opinion  touching 


WILLIAM    HAZLITT  31 

the  character  of  Napoleon  Bonaparte  was 
concerned.  He  had  the  qiudities  of  his 
defects.  If  he  was  sometimes  too  peppery, 
he  was  never  insipid. 

Men  write  best  of  matters  in  which  they 
are  most  interested  and  most  at  home,  and 
of  Hazhtt  we  may  say,  speaking  a  Httle 
cynically,  after  his  own  manner,  that  with 
all  his  multiplicity  of  topics,  he  wrote  best 
about  his  own  feelings  and  his  neighbors' 
infirmities,  though  as  for  the  latter  sort  of 
material,  to  be  sure,  he  did  not  confine 
himself  very  strictly  to  that  with  which  his 
fellow  men  furnished  him.  Proud  as  he 
was,  indeed  (and  here  we  may  note  an- 
other characteristic  of  the  sentimentalist), 
he  had  sometimes  a  really  shocking  lack 
of  decent  personal  reserve.  During  his 
infatuation  with  Miss  Sarah  Walker,  as  all 
the  world  —  or  all  the  Hazlitt  world  — 
knows,  he  could  not  keep  his  tongue  in  his 
head.  He  would  even  buttonhole  a  stranger 
on  a  street  corner,  and  unbosom  his  woes 
to  him  at  full  length  in  most  unmanly 
fashion:  how  he  loved  the  girl,  and  how 
the  girl  would  not  love  him,  and  so  on,  and 
so  on.   And  having  perpetrated  this  almost 


32  FRIENDS   ON   THE    SHELF 

incredible  absurdity,  he  would  tell  of  it 
afterward;  and  then,  to  make  matters  still 
worse,  when  he  had  recovered  from  his 
distemper  (always  a  rapid  process  in  his 
case),  he  wrote  a  book  about  it.  This 
book  is  reprinted,  all  in  fair  type,  in  the 
latest  and  handsomest  edition  of  his  works; 
but,  thank  Heaven,  we  are  none  of  us 
bound  to  read  it.  Nor  need  we  take  the 
whole  miserable  business  too  seriously,  as 
if  (except  on  its  literary  side)  it  were  any- 
thing so  very  far  out  of  the  common. 
It  was  ridiculous,  of  course;  but  so  are 
the  love  affairs  of  elderly  men  generally. 
Their  folly  has  passed  into  a  proverb.  As 
wise  old  Izaak  Walton  —  who  had  two 
excellent  wives  of  his  own,  both  "of 
distinguished  clerical  connexion"  —  long 
ago  expressed  it,  "  love  is  a  flattering  mis- 
chief," "a  passion  that  carries  us  to  com- 
mit errors  with  as  much  ease  as  whirl- 
winds move  feathers."  The  good  man's 
assonance  would  have  driven  Flaubert 
insane,  but  his  doctrine  is  consolatory.  A 
feather  may  surely  be  excused  for  slipping 
its  cable  before  a  whirlwind. 

It    was    only    a  year  or  two  after    the 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT  33 

conclusion  of  this  distressing  episode  that 
Hazhtt,  being  in  Italy,  wrote  one  of  the 
most  delightful  of  his  essays,  the  one  upon 
a  sun-dial. 

'^Horas  non  numero  nisi  serenas  is  the 
motto  of  a  sun-dial  near  Venice," — so  he 
begins.  Then,  after  descanting  upon  the 
exceeding  beauty  and  appropriateness  of 
the  Latin  words,  he  falls  foul  of  the  French 
people  for  the  "less  sombre  and  less  edify- 
ing" turn  that  they  are  accustomed  to  give 
to  similar  matters.  He  has  seen  a  clock  in 
Paris  bearing  a  figure  of  Time  seated  in 
a  boat,  which  Cupid  is  rowing  along,  with 
the  motto,  U Amour  fait  passer  le  Temps; 
a  motto  that  the  French  wits,  it  appears, 
have  travestied  into  Le  Temps  fait  passer 
V Amour.  This  is  ingenious,  he  concedes 
(how  could  he  help  it.?),  but  it  lacks  senti- 
ment. "I  like  people,"  he  declares,  "who 
have  something  that  they  love,  and  some- 
thing that  they  hate."  The  French  "never 
arrive  at  the  classical  —  or  the  romantic." 
The  criticism  may  or  may  not  be  just  (it 
seems  a  hard  saying),  but  what  the  aver- 
age reader  of  the  paragraph  is  likely  to  be 
thinking  of,  if  he  happens  to  be  familiar 


34  FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

with  the  story  of  Hazhtt's  own  adventures 
with  Cupid,  is  not  any  weakness  of  the 
French  people,  but  the  amusing  clever- 
ness with  which  the  Parisian  wits  have 
hit  off  the  weakness  of  a  certain  literary 
Englishman.  Truly  Le  Tevips  fait  passer 
L' Amour,  —  sometimes  with  deplorable 
celerity,  —  on  both  sides  of  the  Channel. 

Naturally,  however,  nothing  of  this  sort 
occurred  to  Hazlitt.  His  good  memory 
was  like  the  sun-dial,  —  it  counted  none 
but  the  bright  hours.  By  this  time  he  had 
almost  forgotten  both  his  unhappy  passion 
and  the  unhappier  book  that  he  wrote 
about  it. 

And,  indeed,  it  is  time  that  we  forgot 
them.  For  one  who  has  found  his  profit 
in  strolling  up  and  down  in  Hazlitt's  essays 
at  odd  hours  for  half  a  lifetime,  it  is  little 
becoming  to  talk  overmuch  about  the 
man's  personal  imperfections.  It  matters 
little  to  any  of  us  now  that  his  temper  was 
bad;  that  his  passions  too  often  betrayed 
him  into  folly;  that  his  faculties  lacked 
a  certain  balance;  that  his  mal  de  reverie, 
whether  born  with  him  or  caught  from 
his    French    master,    sometimes    ran    too 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT  35 

feverish  a  course;  that,  in  short,  he  had 
the  not  unusual  weaknesses  of  super-sensi- 
tive men.  What  does  matter  is  that  at  his 
best  he  wrote  EngKsh  prose  as  compara- 
tively few  have  written  it,  and  in  doing  so 
said  a  world  of  bright  and  memorable 
things  that  no  one  else  could  have  said  so 
well,  even  if  it  had  ever  occurred  to  any 
one  else  to  say  them  at  all.  If  he  was  diffi- 
cult to  live  with,  that  is  a  question  more 
than  seventy  years  out  of  date;  and  no 
competent  reader  ever  brought  a  similar 
accusation  against  his  essays.  It  has  been 
said  of  them  more  than  once,  to  be  sure, 
that  they  are  not  so  good  as  Lamb's;  but 
then,  you  may  say  that  of  all  essays;  and 
really  the  comparison  is  futile,  not  to  call 
it  foolish.  The  men  were  nothing  alike; 
though  even  so,  we  may  gladly  agree  with 
Mr.  Henley's  comment,  that,  as  "dis- 
similars,"  they  "go  gallantly  and  naturally 
together  —  yar  nobile  jratrum." 

Perhaps  Hazlitt  sometimes  wrote  too 
much  in  haste,  with  hardly  sufficient  care 
for  those  minute  excellences  that  go  to  the 
making  of  perfection,  though  he  could  talk 
edifyingly  under  that  head,  and  appears 


3G  FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

to  have  been  the  author  of  the  clever 
parody,  more  clever  than  true,  —  as  clever- 
ness is  apt  to  be, — 

"Learn  to  write  slow:  all  other  graces 
Will  follow  ill  their  proper  places; " 

and  it  may  be,  as  one  of  the  cleverest 
of  his  admirers  assures  us,  that  he  was 
"really  too  witty."  Concerning  points  so 
nice  as  these,  it  is  hard  for  "honest  and 
painful  men"  to  feel  certain.  Haste  has 
the  compensatory  virtue  of  generating  heat, 
while  as  for  the  having  too  much  wit,  it 
is  like  having  too  much  money,  or  more 
than  one's  share  of  personal  beauty;  seri- 
ous misfortunes,  both  of  them,  beyond  a 
doubt  (every  one  says  so),  but  misfortunes 
to  be  put  up  with,  at  a  pinch,  in  a  spirit 
of  Christian  resignation.  All  things  con- 
sidered, too  much  is  perhaps  better  than 
too  little,  and,  for  better  or  worse,  excess 
on  both  sides  of  the  line  is  rather  Hazlitt's 
"note."  Of  the  virtues  of  courage  and 
obstinacy  he  possessed  enough  for  two. 
We  applaud,  even  while  we  pity,  to  see 
how,  all  his  life  long,  he  stood  up  for  what 
he  believed  to  be  the  truth,  in  spite  of  the 
frowns,  and  worse  than  frowns,  of  all  who 


WILLIAM    HAZLITT  37 

in  that  day  had  it  in  their  power  to  blast 
the  career  of  men  in  his  profession.  He 
was  defamed  and  abused,  for  political  rea- 
sons,—  all  for  that  unlucky  Bonapartean 
bee  in  his  bonnet,  —  as  few  men  of  letters 
have  ever  been,  and  to  the  last  he  did  not 
haul  down  his  flag.  Let  so  much  be  said 
in  his  honor.  And  whatever  else  is  for- 
gotten, let  the  words  of  Charles  Lamb  be 
remembered:  "I  should  belie  my  own 
conscience  if  I  said  less  than  that  I  think 
W.  H.  to  be  in  his  natural  and  healthy 
state  one  of  the  wisest  and  finest  spirits 
breathing,"  Tlie  most  virtuous  of  those 
who  blame  him  may  count  themselves 
happy  ever  to  receive  half  so  handsome 
a  tribute  from  so  authoritative  a  source. 
Human  nature  is  a  tangled  skein;  moral 
perfection  is  not  to  be  encountered  every 
day,  even  among  critics.  To  do  one's  main 
stint  well  is  probably  as  much  as  most 
of  us  can  reasonably  hope  for;  and  so 
much,  assuredly,  Hazlitt  did;  for  his  main 
work,  as  we  see  it,  was  the  writing  of 
his  few  volumes  of  critical  and  miscellane- 
ous essays.  Into  these  he  put  the  breath 
of  long  life.    These  are  what  count,  seventy 


38  FRIENDS   ON   THE   SHELF 

years  after.  Whoever  begins  with  them, 
recurs  to  them.  Not  one  of  them  but 
comes  under  Lamb's  heading  of  "take- 
downable." 

As  a  matter  of  course,  however,  being  a 
man  of  active  mind  and  having  his  Hving 
to  make  by  his  pen,  he  wrote  many  things 
besides  these.  He  began,  indeed,  with  a 
metaphysical  treatise,  —  a  child  of  his 
youth  (he  believed  it  a  great  discovery) 
for  which  he  never  ceased  to  cherish  an 
excusable  fondness.  This,  on  the  authority 
of  those  who  have  read  it,  or  have  talked 
with  some  who  have  done  so,  we  take  to 
be  a  rather  difficult  and  innutritions  choke- 
pear,  something  to  be  safely  left  alone  by 
ordinary  seekers  after  knowledge.  Then, 
toward  the  end  of  his  career,  he  produced 
a  four-volume  life  of  Napoleon,  which,  on 
equally  good  authority,  we  should  think 
to  have  been  a  kind  of  anticipation  or 
foreshadowing  of  the  modern  "novel  with 
a  purpose."  His  latest  editors  go  so  far  as 
to  leave  it  out  of  their  fine  twelve-volume 
edition  of  his  works.  Somewhere  between 
these  two  attempts  at  immortality  he  in- 
dulged himself   in   a  book  on   grammar. 


WILLIAM    HAZLITT  39 

intended  especially  to  correct  the  errors 
of  Lindley  Murray,  more  particularly,  we 
believe,  his  faulty  definition  of  a  noun  as 
the  name  of  an  object.  Fortunately  or 
otherwise,  this  work  (every  author  of  con- 
sequence has  at  least  one  such)  never  got 
beyond  the  original  (manuscript)  edition. 
The  making  of  it  seems  a  queer  freak  for 
a  man  of  Hazlitt's  turn  of  mind;  but  then, 
as  Mr.  Birrell  observes,  "grammar  has  its 
fascinations;  and  even  such  men  as  John 
Milton  and  John  Wesley,  no  less  than 
William  Cobbett  and  William  Hazlitt,  suc- 
cumbed to  its  charm."  And  he  might  have 
added  a  name  more  illustrious  still, — the 
name  of  Julius  Caesar. 

All  these  longer  works  (including  a"  Re- 
ply to  Malthus")  we  consider  ourselves, 
as  readers,  at  full  liberty  to  skip.  Further- 
more, we  consider  their  merits  or  demerits 
to  have  no  bearing  whatever  upon  the 
question  of  their  author's  standing  as  an 
essayist.  Like  every  man  who  practices  an 
art,  he  is  entitled  to  be  judged,  not  by 
his  experiments  and  failures,  but  by  his 
successes.  Wordsworth  might  have  writ- 
ten a  thousand   "  Ecclesiastical  Sonnets," 


40  FRIENDS   ON   THE   SHELF 

instead  of  only  one  hundred  and  thirty  odd, 
and  every  one  of  them  might  have  been  less 
imaginative  than  the  one  before  it,  with- 
out making  him  any  the  less  a  true  and 
noble  poet.  For  a  poet,  like  the  Pope,  is  in- 
fallible only  when  he  is  inspired;  at  other 
times  he  may  nod  as  well  as  another  man. 
Moreover,  in  the  case  of  the  poet,  at  least, 
the  man  himself  may  not  be  sure  whether 
or  not,  at  any  given  moment,  the  divine 
afflatus  is  upon  him.  It  was  Doctor  John- 
son, a  poet  himself,  and  the  biographer 
of  poets,  who  said  that  it  was  easy  enough 
to  make  verses;  he  had  made  a  hundred 
in  a  day;  the  difficulty  was  to  know  when 
you  had  made  a  good  one.  And  the  same 
difficulty,  in  a  less  degree,  is  encountered 
by  the  maker  of  prose  essays.  It  is  a  wise 
father  that  knows  his  own  child.  Nor  in 
such  a  matter  have  a  man's  contempo- 
raries any  great  advantage  over  the  man 
himself.  The  folly  of  their  judgments  is 
proverbial.  It  is  necessary  to  wait.  Ap- 
parently there  is  some  strange  virtue  in 
the  mere  lapse  of  time.  "Time  will  tell," 
the  common  people  say;  and  the  scholar 
has  no  better  wisdom.    Hazlitt  must  stand 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT  41 

his  trial  with  the  rest.  Sooner  or  later  the 
years  will  render  their  verdict,  though  none 
of  us  may  live  long  enough  to  hear  it.  The 
best  that  can  be  said  now  is,  that  so  far 
the  balloting  seems  to  be  strongly  in  his 
favor.  , 


EDWARD   FITZGERALD 


EDWARD  FITZGERALD 

"I  HAVE  been  reading  a  good  deal,  but  not 
much  in  the  way  of  knowledge."  So  the 
future  translator  of  Omar  Khayyam  wrote 
to  a  friend  in  1832,  being  then  twenty- 
three  years  old,  and  two  years  out  of  the 
University.  The  words  may  be  taken  as 
fairly  descriptive  of  the  remaining  fifty 
years  of  his  life.  He  was  always  reading 
something,  but  not  with  an  eye  to  rank  or 
scholarship.  His  old  friends  and  school- 
fellows one  after  another  stepped  into  high 
place.  Tennyson,  Thackeray,  and  Carlyle 
were  names  on  every  tongue;  Spedding, 
less  talked  about,  was  deep  in  a  magnum 
opus;  Thompson,  Donne,  Peacock,  Allen, 
and  Cowell  held  positions  of  honor  in 
church  or  college;  but  FitzGerald  had 
buried  himself  of  set  purpose  in  an  insig- 
nificant, out-of-the-way  Suffolk  village, 
and,  by  his  own  account  of  himself,  was 
dozing  away  his  years  in  "visionary  inac- 


46  FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

tivity,"  —  in  "the  enjoyment  of  old  child- 
ish habits  and  sympathies." 

Not  less  truly  than  his  mates,  however, 
as  it  now  appears,  he  was  living  his  own 
life;  and  perhaps  not  less  truly  than  the 
foremost  of  them  he  was  to  come  into  last- 
ing renown.  Such  are  the  "diversities  of 
operations,"  through  which  the  spirit  of 
man  develops  and  discloses  itself. 

Fitz Gerald  came  of  an  eccentric  family. 
"We  are  all  mad,"  he  wrote;  and  his  own 
share  of  the  ancestral  inheritance— mostly 
of  an  amiable  and  amusing  sort — early 
made  itself  evident.  While  he  was  at  Cam- 
bridge, his  mother  drove  up  to  the  college 
gate  in  her  coach  and  four,  and  sent  for 
him  to  come  down  and  see  her;  but  he 
could  not  go,  —  his  only  pair  of  shoes  was 
at  the  cobbler's.  The  Suffolk  friend,  from 
whom  we  have  this  anecdote,  adds  that  to 
the  last  FitzGerald  was  perfectly  careless 
of  dress.  "I  can  see  him  now,"  he  says, 
"walking  down  into  Woodbridge,  with 
an  old  Inverness  cape,  a  double-breasted 
flowered  satin  waistcoat,  slippers  on  his 
feet,  and  a  handkerchief,  very  likely,  tied 
over  his  hat."    It  was  odd,  no  doubt,  that 


EDWARD    FITZGERALD  47 

a  gentleman  should  dress  in  so  unconven- 
tional a  manner;  but  it  was  much  odder 
that  he  should  write  to  Mrs.  Kemble  a 
fortnight  after  the  death  of  his  brother, 
in  1879:  "I  say  but  little  of  my  brother's 
death.  We  were  very  good  friends,  of  very 
different  ways  of  thinking;  I  had  not  been 
within  side  his  lawn  gates  (three  miles  off) 
these  dozen  years  (no  fault  of  his),  and 
I  did  not  enter  them  at  his  funeral  — 
which  you  will  very  likely  —  and  properly 

—  think  wrong."  Only  an  eccentric  man 
could  have  had  occasion  to  say  that;  and 
surely  none  but  a  very  eccentric  man  would 
have  said  it. 

After  leaving  the  University,  —  at  which, 
by  the  way,  he  barely  obtained  his  degree, 

—  he  went  to  Paris  (where  he  had  spent 
part  of  his  boyhood),  but  stayed  only  a 
month  or  two;  and  on  his  return,  having 
just  passed  his  majority,  he  wrote  to  Allen, 
"Tell  Thackeray  that  he  is  never  to  invite 
me  to  his  house,  as  I  intend  never  to  go." 
He  would  rather  go  there  than  anywhere 
else,  to  be  sure;  but  he  has  got  "  all  sorts  of 
Utopian  ideas"  about  society  into  his  head, 
and   is   "going  to  become  a  great  bear." 


48  FRIENDS   ON   THE   SHELF 

In  another  man's  mouth  this  might  have 
been  merely  the  expression  of  a  passing 
whim;  but  whether  FitzGerald  meant  the 
words  seriously  or  not,  they  were  pretty 
accurately  fulfilled.  His  friends  were  of 
the  noblest  and  truest,  and  his  affection 
for  them  was  of  the  warmest  and  stanchest, 
no  man's  more  so;  but  he  chose  to  live 
apart. 

"Why,  sir,"  said  Doctor  Johnson  to  Bos- 
well,  "you  find  no  man,  at  all  intellectual, 
who  is  willing  to  leave  London.  No,  sir, 
when  a  man  is  tired  of  London,  he  is  tired 
of  life;  for  there  is  in  London  all  that 
life  can  aiford."  And  Boswell,  of  course, 
responded  Amen.  "I  can  talk  twice  as 
much  in  London  as  anywhere  else,"  he 
remarked,  with  Boswellian  simplicity.  Pos- 
sibly FitzGerald  was  less  "intellectual" 
than  the  great  luminary  and  his  satellite; 
or  perhaps  his  intellectuality,  such  as  it 
was,  ran  less  exclusively  to  talk.*  At  all 
events,  he  hated  London  as  a  place  of 
residence;    and   even   when   he  paid   it  a 

'  "Mr.  Johnson,  indeed,  as  he  was  a  very  talking  man  him- 
self, had  an  idea  that  nothing  promoted  happiness  so  much 
as  conversation."  —  Mrs.  Piozzi. 


EDWARD    FITZGERALD  49 

visit,  he  was  always  in  such  feverish  and 
ludicrous  haste  to  get  away  that  he  was 
sure  to  leave  his  calls  and  errands  no  more 
than  half  done.  "I  long  to  spread  wing 
and  fly  into  the  Ivind  clear  air  of  the  coun- 
try," he  writes  on  one  occasion  of  this 
sort.  "I  see  nobody  in  the  streets  half  so 
handsome  as  Mr.  Reynolds  of  our  parish. 
...  A  great  city  is  a  deadly  plague.  .  .  . 
I  get  radishes  to  eat  for  breakfast  of  a 
morning;  with  them  comes  a  savor  of 
earth  that  brings  all  the  delicious  gardens 
of  the  world  back  into  one's  soul,  and 
almost  draws  tears  from  one's  eyes."  In 
the  mouth  of  a  ma'n  of  social  position, 
University  training,  and  independent  for- 
tune,—  who  had  lived  in  Paris,  and  was 
only  thirty-five  years  old,  —  language  like 
this  bespeaks  a  born  rustic  and  recluse,  not 
to  say  a  philosopher.  And  such  FitzGerald 
was. 

•  Not  that  he  craved  a  life  in  the  wil- 
derness (being  neither  a  John  the  Baptist 
nor  a  Rene),  or  had  any  extraordinary 
appreciation  of  the  beauties  of  nature,  so 
called.  There  was  little  of  Wordsworth  or 
of  Thoreau  in  his  composition,  or,  if  there 


50  FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

was,  it  seldom  found  expression;  but  he 
detested  crowds,  was  ill  at  ease  in  society, 
and  having  a  bent  toward  homely  solitude, 
was  independent  enough  to  follow  it.  It 
must  seem  queer  to  his  old  friends,  he 
knew,  but  he  preferred  to  "poke  about  in 
the  country,"  using  his  books,  as  ladies  do 
their  knitting  work,  to  pass  the  time  away. 
Here  is  one  of  his  days,  a  day  of  "glorious 
sunshine:"  — 

"All  the  morning  I  read  about  Nero  in 
Tacitus,  lying  at  full  length  on  a  bench 
in  the  garden:  a  nightingale  singing,  and 
some  red  anemones  eyeing  the  sun  man- 
fully not  far  off.  A  funny  mixture  all  this: 
Nero,  and  the  delicacy  of  spring;  all  very 
human,  however.  Then  at  half  past  one 
lunch  on  Cambridge  cream  cheese;  then 
a  ride  over  hill  and  dale:  then  spudding 
up  some  weeds  from  the  grass:  and  then 
coming  in,  I  sit  down  to  write  to  you,  my 
sister  winding  red  worsted  from  the  back  of 
a  chair,  and  the  most  delightful  little  girl 
in  the  world  chattering  incessantly.  So 
runs  the  world  away.  You  think  I  live  in 
epicurean  ease:  but  this  happens  to  be  a 
jolly  day :   one  is  n't  always  well,  or  toler- 


EDWARD    FITZGERALD  51 

ably  good,  the  weather  is  not  always  clear, 
nor  nightingales  singing,  nor  Tacitus  full 
of  pleasant  atrocity.  But  such  as  life  is, 
I  believe  I  have  got  hold  of  a  good  end 
of  it." 

Sometimes,  it  must  be  owned,  he  seemed 
not  quite  to  approve  of  his  own  choice. 
"Men  ought  to  have  an  ambition  to  stir 
and  travel,  and  fill  their  heads  and  senses." 
So  he  says  once,  in  an  unusual  mood  of 
something  like  penitence.  Even  then,  how- 
ever, he  concludes,  characteristically,  "but 
so  it  is."  There  speaks  the  real  FitzGer- 
ald.  He  is  what  he  is,  what  he  was  made: 
a  man  without  ambition;  a  man  incap- 
able, from  first  to  last,  of  taking  himself 
seriously.  He  could  never  have  said,  as 
Tennyson  did  in  his  youth,  and  in  effect 
for  all  his  life,  "I  mean  to  be  famous."  If 
Fitz Gerald  meant  to  be  anything,  —  which 
is  doubtful,  —  he  meant  to  be  obscure. 
The  wonder  of  it  all  is  that  his  life  was 
beautiful,  his  spirit  sweet,  and  his  post- 
humous reward  celebrity. 

He  had  little  or  none  of  the  melancholy 
which  so  generally  accompanies  the  union 
of  exceptional  powers  with  an  enfeebled 


52  FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

will  and  a  comparative  intellectual  steril- 
ity. For  one  thing,  he  seems  to  have  been 
spared  the  persecution  of  friends.  As  he 
expected  little  of  himself,  so  they  expected 
little  of  him.  Unlike  most  men  of  a  kin- 
dred sort  —  men  of  whom  Gray  and  Amiel 
may  stand  as  typical  examples  — he  was 
left  to  go  his  own  gait.  Nobody  wrote  to 
him  week  after  week,  chiding  him  for  his 
indolence  and  entreating  him  to  produce 
a  masterpiece.  Happy  man  that  he  was, 
his  youth  had  held  out  no  promise  of  such 
production,  and  so  his  subsequent  course 
was  not  clouded  by  the  shadow  of  a  pro- 
mise unfulfilled.  If  he  was  down  in  the 
country  letting  the  moss  grow  over  him, 
why,  it  was  only  "old  Fitz,"  from  whom 
nobody  had  ever  looked  for  anything  very 
different.  So  Thackeray,  Tennyson,  and 
the  rest  seem  to  have  thought.  And  so 
thought  the  man  himself.  Life  was  worth 
living;  oh  yes;  and  he  had  "got  hold  of  a 
good  end  of  it;"  but  it  was  hardly  a  thing 
to  disquiet  one's  self  about.  He  set  little 
value  upon  time  or  money,  and  corre- 
spondingly little  upon  his  own  gifts.  There 
were  always  hours  enough,  and  more  than 


EDWARD    FITZGERALD  53 

enough,  for  the  nothings  he  had  to  do;  his 
income  was  sufficient ;  if  it  declined,  —  as 
it  did,  —  it  was  no  matter,  he  had  only  to 
reduce  his  expenditures;  he  never  earned 
a  penny,  or  considered  the  possibility  of 
doing  so;  and  withal,  he  was  not  made  to 
write  anything  himself,  but  to  please  him- 
self with  the  writings  of  others. 

He  was  born  of  the  school  of  Epicurus. 
His  aim  was  to  pass  the  time  quietly; 
pitching  his  desires  low,  never  overmuch 
in  earnest,  taking  things  as  they  came,  — 

"Crowning  the  present,  doubting  of  the  rest;" 

"not  a  hero,  not  even  a  philosopher,  but 
a  quiet,  humane,  and  prudent  man;"  cul- 
tivating no  enthusiasm,  and  aiming  at  no 
perfection.  For  fifty  years  he  seems  to 
have  been  a  consistent  vegetarian.  Like 
the  master  of  his  school,  —  whom  he  sel- 
dom or  never  mentions,  and  of  whom  he 
perhaps  as  seldom  thought,  —  he  subsisted 
mostly  on  bread,  and  drank  wine  sparingly. 
Such  a  diet  gave  him  lightness  of  spirits, 
he  said,  —  a  better  thing,  surely,  than  any 
tickling  of  the  palate. 

With   his    liking   for   the  country  —  in 


54  FRIENDS    ON    THE   SHELF 

which,  again,  he  was  at  one  with  his 
unrecognized  master  —  went  a  strong 
and  persistent  preference  for  the  society 
of  common  people.  For  correspondents  he 
had  always  scholars  and  men  of  note,  the 
best  of  his  time,  and  many  of  them;  for 
daily  associates  he  chose  a  sailor,  a  village 
clergyman's  family,  and  an  old  woman 
or  two.  One  of  the  greatest  men  he  had 
ever  known  was  his  sailor,  the  captain  of 
his  yacht,  —  "niy  captain,"  he  calls  him; 
"a  gentleman  of  nature's  grandest  type," 
*'fit  to  be  king  of  a  kingdom  as  well  as  of 
a  lugger."  From  Lowestoft  he  sends  word 
to  Laurence,  the  portrait  painter,  "I 
came  here  a  few  days  ago,  for  the  benefit 
of  my  old  doctor,  the  sea,  and  my  cap- 
tain's company,  which  is  as  good."  One 
who  knew  him  at  the  time  of  his  intimacy 
with  Bernard  Barton,  the  Quaker  poet 
(fortunate  Quaker,  with  Lamb  and  Fitz- 
Gerald  both  writing  letters  to  him!),  de- 
scribes him  as  living  in  a  little  cottage  at 
Boulge,  a  mile  from  the  village,  on  the 
edge  of  his  father's  park,  with  no  com- 
panion save  a  parrot  and  a  Skye  terrier. 
Such  domestic  duties  as  he  did  not  attend 


EDWARD    FITZGERALD  55 

to  with  his  own  hands  were  performed 
by  an  "old-fashioned  Suffolk  woman." 
It  was  at  this  period  that  FitzGerald  — - 
then  thirty -three  years  old  —  wrote  to 
Barton,  "I  believe  I  should  like  to  live 
in  a  small  house  just  outside  a  pleasant 
English  town  all  the  days  of  my  life,  mak- 
ing myself  useful  in  a  humble  way,  reading 
my  books,  and  playing  a  rubber  of  whist 
at  night."  And  it  may  be  added  that  few 
men  have  ever  come  nearer  to  realizing 
their  own  dream. 

The  Hall  was  mostly  unoccupied  in 
those  days,  though  "the  great  lady"  — 
FitzGerald's  mother  —  would  be  there 
once  in  a  while,  and  "would  drive  about 
in  a  coach  of  four  black  horses."  So  says 
the  son  of  the  village  rector,  who  adds 
that  FitzGerald  "used  to  walk  by  himself, 
slowly,  with  a  Skye  terrier."  The  rector's 
son  (a  grandson,  by  the  bye,  of  the  poet 
Crabbe)  was  rather  afraid  of  his  "grave, 
middle-aged"  neighbor.  "He  seemed  a 
proud  and  very  punctilious  man  .  .  . 
never  very  happy  or  light-hearted,  though 
his  conversation  was  most  amusing  some- 
times."    On  this  last  point  we  have  also 


56  FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

the  testimony  of  his  housekeeper,  the 
"old-fashioned  Suffolk  woman"  before 
mentioned.  "So  kind  he  was,"  she  says; 
"not  never  one  to  make  no  obstacles. 
Such  a  joking  gentleman  he  was,  too!" 
All  his  dependents,  indeed,  speak  of  his 
kindness.  A  boy  of  the  village,  who  was 
employed  to  read  to  him  in  the  evening 
during  his  later  years,  told  Mr.  Groome  * 
"how  Mr.  FitzGerald  always  gave  him 
plenty  of  plum  cake,  and  how  they  used 
to  play  piquet  together.  Only  sometimes 
a  tame  mouse  would  come  out  and  sit 
on  the  table,  and  then  not  a  card  must  be 
dropped."  "A  pretty  picture,"  Mr.  Groome 
calls  it.    And  so  say  we. 

As  to  the  picture  of  FitzGerald's  man- 
ner of  life  taken  as  a  whole,  it  will  be 
thought  "pretty"  or  not  according  to  the 
prepossessions  of  the  reader.  To  many  it 
will  seem  in  all  respects  amiable,  a  refresh- 
ment to  read  about.  Why  should  a  man 
not  be  what  he  was  made  to  be  ?  If  he  likes 
the  heat  of  battle,  let  him  fight,  so  that  he 
does  it  fairly  and  with  those  who  enjoy  the 
same  game.    If  another  man  cares  not  to 

'  Author  of  Tim  Sujfolk  Friends. 


EDWARD    FITZGERALD  57 

be  strenuous,  but  only  to  pass  his  day  inno- 
cently, with  pleasure  to  himself  and  harm 
to  nobody  else,  —  why,  the  world  is  big 
enough;  let  him  be  at  liberty  to  sit  in  his 
corner  and  see  the  crowd  go  by. 

"  '  An  hour  we  have,'  thou  saidst.   'Ah,  waste  it  well.'" 

And  after  all,  the  idler  may  reach  the  goal 
as  soon  as  some  who  hurry.  The  race 
ought  to  be  his  who  has  trained  hardest 
and  run  hardest;  and  it  would  be,  per- 
haps, if  the  world  were  logically  and  pro- 
perly governed;  but  things  being  as  they 
are,  the  experience  of  mankind  seems  to 
show  a  measure  of  truth  in  the  old  Hebrew 
paradox,  "The  race  is  not  to  the  swift." 
Whether  it  is  or  not,  the  question  had 
no  particular  interest  for  Fitz Gerald.  His 
thoughts  were  not  of  winning  a  prize.  His 
temperament  had  put  him  out  of  the  com- 
petition. Temperament  is  fatality;  and  he 
was  content  to  have  it  so.  "It  is  not  my 
talent,"  he  said,  "to  take  the  tide  at  its 
flow."  In  his  "predestined  Plot  of  Dust 
and  Soul"  the  vine  of  worldly  prudence 
had  never  struck  root. 

He  was  peculiar  in  other  ways.    He  was 


58  FRIENDS   ON   THE   SHELF 

constitutionally  a  skeptic.  Many  things 
which  he  had  been  taught  to  believe 
seemed  to  him  insuflficiently  established; 
improbable,  if  not  incredible.  The  Master 
of  Trinity  wrote  of  him  and  of  one  of  his 
dearest  friends,  "Two  of  the  purest-living 
men  among  my  intimates,  FitzGerald  and 
Spedding,  were  prisoners  in  Doubting 
Castle  all  their  lives,  or  at  least  the  last 
half  of  them."  The  language  is  euphemis- 
tic. Some  calamities  are  so  deeply  felt  that 
it  is  natural  to  veil  allusion  to  them  under 
metaphor.  His  friends,  the  Master  means 
to  say,  had  lost  their  faith  in  the  tenets  of 
the  English  Church.  "A  great  problem," 
he  pronounces  it.  And  such  it  surely  was : 
that  two  such  men — "pure-living  men!" 
—  should  doubt  of  matters  which  to  so 
many  bishops,  priests,  and  deacons  are  the 
very  certainties  of  existence.  But  so  it  is. 
Some  men  seem  to  be  born  for  unbelief; 
and  out  of  that  number  a  few  are  so  non- 
conformative,  so  perverse,  or  so  honest 
as  to  live  according  to  their  lights.  Con- 
cerning questions  of  this  kind  FitzGerald 
said  little  either  in  public  or  private.  An 
unheroic,  peace-loving  man,  who  wishes  to 


EDWARD    FITZGERALD  59 

slip  through  the  world  unnoticed,  natu- 
rally keeps  some  thoughts  to  himself, 
growing  them,  to  borrow  Keats's  phrase, 
in  "a  philosophic  back-garden."  He  rea- 
soned about  them,  it  would  seem,  in  a 
quiet  spirit,  patient,  perhaps  half  indiffer- 
ent, being  happily  free  from  any  corroding 
curiosity  as  to  the  origin  and  destiny  of 
things.  In  that  regard  Nature  had  been 
good  to  him.  What  could  not  be  known, 
he  could  get  on  without  knowing.  Why 
wear  out  one's  teeth  in  champing  an  iron 
bit  ?  He  spoke  his  mind,  anonymously, 
in  his  translation  of  the  Omar  Khayyam 
quatrains,  —  which  are  perhaps  rather 
more  skeptical  than  the  book  of  Ecclesias- 
tes,  —  and  once,  at  least,  he  shut  the  lips  of 
a  man  whom  he  thought  a  meddler.  The 
rector  of  Woodbridge,  we  are  told  by  Mr. 
Groome,  called  on  FitzGerald  to  express 
his  regret  at  never  seeing  him  at  church. 
We  may  surmise  that  the  "regret"  was 
expressed  in  a  rather  lofty  and  dog- 
matic tone,  a  tone  not  unnatural,  surely,  in 
the  case  of  one  clothed  with  supernatural 
authority.  "Sir,"  said  FitzGerald,  whose 
fondness  for  clergymen's  society  was  one 


60  FRIENDS   ON   THE    SHELF 

of  his  marked  characteristics,  "you  might 
have  conceived  that  a  man  has  not  come 
to  my  years  without  thinking  much  of 
these  things.  I  beheve  I  may  say  that  I 
have  reflected  on  them  fully  as  much  as 
yourself.  You  need  not  repeat  this  visit." 
His  correspondence,  by  which  mainly 
the  world  knows  him,  is  full  of  interesting 
revelations.  His  whims  and  foibles,  and 
his  own  gentle  amusement  over  them;  his 
bookish  likes  and  dislikes,  one  as  hearty 
as  the  other;  his  affection  for  his  friends, 
whose  weak  points  he  could  sometimes 
lay  a  pretty  sharp  finger  on,  notwithstand- 
ing, frankness  being  almost  always  one  of 
an  odd  man's  virtues;  his  delight  in  the 
sea  and  in  his  garden  ("Don't  you  love 
the  oleander  ?  I  rather  worship  mine,"  he 
writes  to  Mrs.  Kemble) ;  his  pottering  over 
translations  from  the  Spanish,  the  Per- 
sian, and  the  Greek  ("all  very  well;  only 
very  little  affairs:"  he  feels  "ashamed" 
when  his  friend  Thompson  inquires  about 
them);  his  music,  wherein  his  taste  was 
simple  but  difficult  (he  played  without 
technique  and  sang  without  a  voice,  loving 
to  '*  recollect  some  of  '  Fidelio '  on  the  piano- 


EDWARD    FITZGERALD  61 

forte,"  and  counting  it  more  enjoyable 
"to  perform  in  one's  head  one  of  Handel's 
choruses"  than  to  hear  most  Exeter  Hall 
performances),  —  all  these  things,  and 
many  more,  come  out  in  his  letters,  which 
are  never  anything  but  letters,  written  to 
please  his  friends,  —  and  himself,  —  with 
no  thought  of  anything  beyond  that.  In 
them  we  see  his  life  passing.  He  is  trifling 
it  away ;  but  no  matter.  He  might  do  more 
with  it,  perhaps;  but  cui  bono?  At  the 
end  of  his  summer  touring  he  writes:  "A 
little  Bedfordshire  —  a  little  Northamp- 
tonshire —  a  little  more  folding  of  the 
hands — the  same  faces — the  same  fields 
—  the  same  thoughts  occurring  at  the  same 
turns  of  road  —  this  is  all  I  have  to  tell  of ; 
nothing  at  all  added  —  but  the  summer 
gone.  My  garden  is  covered  with  yellow 
and  brown  leaves;  and  a  man  is  digging 
up  the  garden  beds  before  my  window,  and 
will  plant  some  roots  and  bulbs  for  next 
year.  My  parsons  come  and  smoke  with 
me."  What  age  does  the  reader  give  to  the 
author  of  this  paragraph,  so  full  of  after- 
noon shadows  ?    He  was  thirty-five. 

But  if  he  was  an  idle  fellow,  careful  for 


62  FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

nothing,  poor  in  spirit,  contented  to  be 
the  hindmost,  devil  or  no  devil,  "reading 
a  little,  dreaming  a  little,  playing  a  little, 
smoking  a  little,"  doing  whatever  he  did 
**a  little,"  he  was  not  without  a  kind  of 
faith  in  his  own  capacity.  He  knew,  or 
believed  that  he  knew,  what  he  was  good 
for.  "I  am  a  man  of  taste,"  he  said  more 
than  once.  If  he  could  not  write  poetry,  — 
taste  being  only  "the  feminine  of  genius," 
—  he  knew  it  when  he  saw  it.  He  read 
books  with  his  own  eyes,  not  half  so  com- 
mon or  easy  a  trick  as  many  would  suppose. 
And  having  read  a  book  in  that  uncon- 
ventional way,  it  was  by  no  means  to  be 
taken  for  granted  that  he  would  like  it, 
though  its  author  might  be  one  of  his  dear- 
est friends.  And  if  he  failed  to  like  it,  he 
seldom  failed  to  say  so.  If  he  commended 
a  book,  —  a  new  book,  that  is,  —  it  was 
apt  to  be  with  a  mixture  of  criticism.  He 
cared  little  or  nothing  for  flattery  himself, 
and  was  magnanimous  enough  to  assume 
(an  enormous  assumption)  that  literary 
workers  in  general  were  equally  high- 
minded.  If  one  friend  sends  another  a 
book  of  his  own  writing,  the  best  course 


EDWARD    FITZGERALD  63 

for  the  second  man  is  merely  to  acknow- 
ledge its  receipt,  unless  he  has  some  fault 
to  indicate!  This  he  sets  down  quite  sim- 
ply as  his  belief  and  ordinary  practice.  It 
was  the  more  comfortable  way  for  both 
parties,  he  thought.  Perhaps  he  thought, 
too,  that  it  was  the  more  conducive  to 
habits  of  truthfulness.  (Others  might  con- 
clude that  its  most  immediate  and  perma- 
nent effect  would  be  to  discourage  the 
circulation  of  authors'  copies.)  If  he  con- 
sidered Mr.  Lowell's  odes  to  lack  wings, 
he  told  Mr.  Lowell  so.  If  his  taste  was 
offended  by  the  style  of  the  "Moosehead 
Journal"  ("too  clever  by  half"),  he  told 
Mr.  Lowell  of  that  also.  Wliy  not  ?  Great 
men  did  not  resent  truth-speaking,  but 
were  thankful  for  it.  He  was  full  of  won- 
der and  sorrow  when  he  saw  Tennyson  — 
who  had  stopped  at  Woodbridge  for  a  day 
to  visit  him,  after  a  separation  of  twenty 
years — fretted  by  the  "Quarterly's"  un- 
favorable comments.  If  Tennyson  had 
lived  an  active  life,  like  Scott  and  Shake- 
speare, he  would  have  done  more  and 
talked  about  it  less.  He  recalls  Scott's 
saying  to   Lockhart,   "You   know  that  I 


64  FRIENDS   ON   THE    SHELF 

don't  care  a  curse  about  what  I  write;" 
and  he  beheved  that  it  was  not  far  other- 
wise with  Shakespeare.  "Even  old  Words- 
worth, wrapt  up  in  his  mountain  mists, 
and  proud  as  he  was,  was  above  all  this 
vain  disquietude."  If  a  man  is  not  greater 
than  the  greatest  things  he  does,  the  less 
said  about  him  and  them  the  better.  His 
work  should  drop  from  him  like  fruit  from 
a  tree.  Henceforth  let  the  world  look  after 
it,  if  it  is  worth  looking  after.  The  tree 
should  have  other  business. 

To  say  that  Fitz Gerald  lived  in  accord- 
ance with  his  own  doctrine  in  this  regard 
is  to  say  that  he  lived  like  a  man  of  dignity 
and  high  self-respect,  —  like  an  old-fash- 
ioned man,  —  sometimes  called  a  gentle- 
man,—  one  is  tempted  to  say:  a  man 
who  would  cut  off  his  hand  sooner  than 
solicit  a  vote,  or  angle  for  a  compliment,  or 
w^himper  over  a  criticism.  Old-fashioned 
he  certainly  was, —  old-fashioned  and  con- 
servative. He  liked  old  books,  old  music, 
old  places,  old  friends.  The  adjective  is 
constantly  on  the  point  of  his  pen  as  a 
word  of  endearment:  "old  Alfred,"  "old 
Thackeray,"  "old  Spedding"— "dear  old 


EDWARD    FITZGERALD  65 

Jem."  So,  writing  to  Mrs.  Kemble  from 
the  seacoast,  he  says,  "Wiy  it  happens 
that  I  so  often  write  to  you  from  here,  I 
scarce  know;  only  that  one  comes  with 
few  books,  perhaps,  and  the  sea  somehow 
talks  to  one  of  old  things;"  which  was  not 
an  unhandsome  tribute  to  an  old  friend, 
though  the  old  friend  was  a  woman.  He 
was  a  "little  Englander,"  as  the  word 
is  now.  For  a  nation,  as  for  an  individual, 
great  estates  were,  he  thought,  more  a 
trouble  than  a  blessing.  "  Once  more  I  say, 
would  we  were  a  little,  peaceful,  unambi- 
tious, trading  nation,  like  —  the  Dutch!" 
Men  of  taste  are  naturally  conservatives 
and  moderates. 

Not  that  Fitz  Gerald  was  too  nice  for 
the  world  he  lived  in.  His  carelessness 
about  dress,  his  contentment  with  mean 
lodgings,  and  his  liking  for  the  plainest 
and  homeliest  service  and  companionship 
have  already  been  touched  upon.  Even 
in  the  matter  of  reading,  while  he  held 
pretty  strictly  to  the  classics  (not  meaning 
the  Greek  and  the  Latin  in  particular),  he 
cherished  one  bit  of  f reakishness :  a  great 
fondness  for  the  "  Newgate  Calendar  " !  "I 


66  FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

don't  ever  wish  to  see  and  hear  these 
things  tried;  but  when  they  are  in  print, 
I  like  to  sit  in  court  then,  and  see  the 
judges,  counsel,  prisoners,  crowd;  hear 
the  lawyers'  objections,  the  murmur  in 
the  court,  etc."  So  he  writes  to  his  friend 
Allen,  at  fifty-six.  And  the  passion  re- 
mained with  him,  as  most  things  do  that 
are  part  of  a  man's  life  at  fifty  odd;  for 
fourteen  years  later  he  writes  to  Mrs. 
Kemble,  as  of  a  matter  well  understood 
among  his  friends:  "I  like,  you  know,  a 
good  murder;   but  in  its  place  — 

'  The  charge  is  prepared ;   the  lawyers  are  met  — 
The  judges  all  ranged,  a  terrible  show.'"  * 

It  may  be  that  on  this  point  he  was  not 
so  very  eccentric.  Certainly  our  newspa- 
per editors  give  the  general  public  credit 
for  having  a  reasonably  good  appetite 
for  capital  cases.  And  FitzGerald's  weak- 
ness —  if  it  was  a  weakness  —  is  curiously 
matched  by  what  we  are  told  of  another 
eminent  translator,  the  man  to  whom  we 

^  In  a  letter  to  bis  friend  Pollock  he  says:  "  To-morrow  I  am 
going  to  one  of  my  great  treats,  namely,  the  Assizes  at  Ipswich : 
where  I  shall  see  little  Voltaire  Jervis,  and  old  Parke,  who  I 
trust  will  have  the  gout,  he  bears  it  so  Christianly." 


EDWARD    FITZGERALD  67 

owe  our  English  Plato  and  Tliucydides. 
A  shy  student,  Mr.  Tollemache  says,  hap- 
pened to  sit  next  to  Jowett  at  dinner,  and 
having  hard  work  to  maintain  the  con- 
versation, as  such  men  often  had,  in  Jow- 
ett's  unresponsive  company,  stumbled  upon 
the  subject  of  murder.  "To  his  surprise 
the  Master  rose  to  the  bait,  mentioned  some 
causes  celebres,  and  dropped  all  formal- 
ity." Naturally  the  young  Oxonian  was  sur- 
prised; but  when  he  spoke  of  the  incident 
to  a  man  who  knew  the  Master  of  Balliol 
better  than  he,  the  latter  said,  "If  you  can 
get  Jowett  to  talk  of  murders,  he  will  go 
off  like  a  house  on  fire." 

There  is  something  of  the  savage  an- 
cestor in  all  of  us.  We  are  wrong,  per- 
haps, to  feel  astonished  that  men  of  the 
cloister,  studious  men,  never  called  upon 
to  kill  so  much  as  a  superfluous  kitten, 
should  find  an  agreeable  excitement  in  a 
dramatic,  second-hand  tickling  of  certain 
half -dormant  sensibilities.  If  it  is  ghastly 
good  fun  to  read  of  murder  in  Scott  or  Du- 
mas, why  not  in  the  "  Newgate  Calendar  "  ? 
Who  knows  how  many  tender-hearted, 
white-handed    scholars    would    enjoy   the 


68  FRIENDS   ON   THE    SHELF 

spectacle  of  a  prize  fight,  if  only  the  amuse- 
ment were  a  few  shades  more  respect- 
able in  the  public  eye  ?  And  how  long  is  it 
since  we  saw  college  men  falling  over  one 
another  in  a  mad  rush  to  enlist  for  battle, 
every  one  in  a  fever  of  anxiety  lest  he 
should  be  too  late,  and  so  be  debarred 
from  the  unusual  pleasure  of  killing  and 
being  killed  ? 

No!  Wlien  FitzGerald  called  himself 
a  man  of  taste,  he  did  not  mean  to  confess 
himself  an  intellectual  prig,  with  a  school- 
master's eye  for  petty  failings  and  a  super- 
refined  disrelish  for  everything  short  of 
perfection.  As  for  perfection,  indeed,  he 
did  not  much  expect  it,  whether  in  human 
beings  or  in  their  works;  and  when  he 
found  it,  he  did  not  always  like  it.  He 
thought  some  other  things  were  better. 
He  preferred  genius  to  art:  that  is  to  say, 
he  enjoyed  high  qualities,  though  accom- 
panied by  defects,  better  than  lower  quali- 
ties cultivated  to  a  state  of  flawlessness. 
"The  grandest  things,"  he  believed,  "do 
not  depend  on  delicate  finish."  Thus  in 
poetry  he  admired  a  score  of  Beranger's 
almost  perfect  songs,  but  would  have  given 


EDWARD    FITZGERALD  69 

them  all  for  a  score  of  Burns's  couplets, 
stanzas,  or  single  lines  scattered  among 
"his  quite  iwperfect  lyrics."  Burns  had  so 
much  more  genius,  so  much  more  inspi- 
ration. In  the  same  way  FitzGerald  had 
little  patience  with  some  perfect  novels, — 
with  Miss  Austen's,  to  be  more  specific. 
They  were  perfect;  yes,  he  had  no  thought 
of  denying  that;  but  they  did  not  interest 
him.  Even  Trollope's  were  more  to  his 
mind,  with  all  their  caricature  and  care- 
lessness. Miss  Austen  is  "capital  as  far  as 
she  goes;  but  she  never  goes  out  of  the 
parlor."  "  If  Magnus  Troil,  or  Jack  Bunce, 
or  even  one  of  Fielding's  brutes,  would 
but  dash  in  upon  the  gentility  and  swear  a 
round  oath  or  two ! "  Co  well,  he  adds,  reads 
Miss  Austen  at  night  after  his  Sanskrit 
studies.    "It  composes  him,  like  gruel." 

There  is  no  doubt  of  it,  FitzGerald 
was  old-fashioned,  especially  as  a  novel- 
reader.  He  doted  on  Clarissa  Harlowe, 
"that  wonderful  and  aggravating  Clarissa 
Harlowe,"  and  he  read  Dickens.  "A  little 
Shakespeare — a  cockney  Shakespeare,  if 
you  will  ...  a  piece  of  pure  genius."  So 
he  breaks  out  after  a  chapter  of  Copper- 


70  FRIENDS   ON   THE    SHELF 

field.  "I  have  been  sunning  myself  in 
Dickens,"  he  says  at  another  time.  A 
pretty  compliment  that,  for  any  man.  It 
is  good  to  hear  his  praise  of  Scott.  Even 
those  who  can  no  longer  abide  that  ro- 
mancer themselves — for  there  are  such, 
unaccountable  as  the  fact  may  seem  to 
happier  men — may  well  feel  a  touch  of 
warmth  at  FitzGerald's  fire.  He  read  fic- 
tion —  as  he  read  everything  else  —  for 
pleasure;  and  in  English  no  other  fiction 
pleased  him  so  much,  taking  the  years 
together,  as  Sir  Walter's.  In  1871  he  has 
been  reading  "  The  Pirate "  again.  He 
knows  it  is  not  one  of  the  best,  but  he  is 
glad  to  find  how  much  he  likes  it;  nay, 
that  is  below  the  mark,  how  he  "wonders 
and  delights  in  it."  "With  all  its  faults, 
often  mere  carelessness,  what  a  broad 
Shakespearean  daylight  over  it  all,  and  all 
with  no  effort."  He  finished  it  with  sad- 
ness, thinking  he  might  never  read  it  again. 
And  as  he  was  always  reading  Scott, 
and  as  often  praising  him,  so  he  was  always 
reading  and  praising  Don  Quixote.  In 
1867  he  has  been  on  his  yacht.  "I  have 
had    Don    Quixote,    Boccaccio,    and    my 


EDWARD    FITZGERALD  71 

dear  Sophocles  (once  more)  for  company 
on  board:  the  first  of  these  so  delightful 
that  I  got  to  love  the  very  dictionary  in 
which  I  had  to  look  out  the  words :  yes,  and 
often  the  same  words  over  and  over  again. 
The  book  really  seemed  to  me  the  most 
delightful  of  all  books:  Boccaccio  delight- 
ful too,  but  millions  of  miles  behind;  in 
fact,  a  whole  planet  away."  In  1876  his 
mind  is  the  same,  "I  have  taken  refuge 
from  the  Eastern  Question  in  Boccaccio. 
...  I  suppose  one  must  read  this  in 
Italian  as  my  dear  Don  in  Spanish:  the 
language  of  each  fitting  the  subject  'like  a 
glove.'  But  there  is  nothing  to  come  up  to 
the  Don  and  his  Man." 

Bookishness  of  this  affectionate,  enthu- 
siastic sort,  constantly  recurring,  would  be 
enough  of  itself  to  give  the  letters  a  wel- 
come ;  for  every  reader  loves  to  hear  books 
praised  at  first  hand,  the  man  rather  than 
the  critic  speaking,  even  though  they  be 
such  as  lie  outside  the  too  narrow  limits 
of  his  own  appreciation.  Happiness  is  con- 
tagious, and  it  is  better  than  nothing,  as 
was  said  just  now,  to  warm  one's  self  at 
another's  fire. 


72  FRIENDS   ON  THE    SHELF 

FitzGerald's  relations  with  books  (with 
his  books)  were  those  of  a  lover.  He  can 
never  say  all  he  feels  about  Virgil.  Horace 
he  is  unable  to  care  about,  in  spite  of  his 
good  sense,  elegance,  and  occasional  force. 
"He  never  made  my  eyes  wet  as  Virgil 
does."  When  he  reads  "  Comus  "  and  "  Ly- 
cidas,"  even  at  seventy,  it  is  "with  wonder 
and  a  sort  of  awe."  Surely  he  was  a  man  of 
taste;  born  to  be  an  appreciator  of  other 
men's  good  work. 

And  because  he  was  a  man  of  taste,  — ■ 
or  partly  for  that  reason,  —  his  praise, 
even  in  its  warmest  and  most  personal 
expression  (like  the  words  just  quoted 
about  Virgil),  has  not  only  no  taint  of 
affectation,  but  no  suggestion  of  senti- 
mentality. With  him,  as  with  all  healthy 
souls,  feeling  was  a  matter  of  moments; 
it  came  in  jets,  not  in  a  stream;  and  its 
outgiving  was  always  with  a  note  of  un- 
consciousness, of  deep  and  absolute  sin- 
cerity. His  life,  inward  and  outward,  was 
pitched  in  a  low  key.  He  never  com- 
plained, let  what  would  happen;  he  had 
too  much  of  "old  Omar's  consolation" 
for  that  (too  much  fatalism,  that  is);   his 


EDWARD    FITZGERALD  73 

own  weaknesses,  even,  he  took  as  they 
were ;  why  regret  what  was  past  mending  ? 
but  his  prevaihng  mood  was  anything  but 
rhapsodical.  All  the  more  effective,  there- 
fore, are  the  outbursts — frequent,  but 
never  more  than  a  sentence  or  two  together 
—  in  which  he  utters  himself  touching 
those  best  of  all  companions,  his  "friends 
on  the  shelf." 

The  most  striking  instance  of  this  affec- 
tionate absorption,  this  falling  in  love  with 
a  book,  as  one  cannot  help  calling  it,  oc- 
curred in  the  last  decade  of  his  life.  In  the 
summer  of  1875,  when  his  health  seemed 
to  be  failing,  and  he  was  beginning,  as  he 
said,  to  "smell  the  ground,"  he  suddenly 
became  enamored  of  Madame  de  Sevigne. 
Till  then,  in  spite  of  his  favorite  Sainte- 
Beuve,  he  had  kept  aloof  from  her,  repelled 
by  her  perpetual  harping  on  her  daughter. 
Now  he  finds  that  "it  is  all  genuine,  and 
the  same  intense  feeling  expressed  in  a 
hundred  natural  yet  graceful  ways;  and 
beside  all  this  such  good  sense,  good  feel- 
ing, humor,  love  of  books  and  country 
life,  as  makes  her  certainly  the  queen  of 
all  letter- writers." 


74  FRIENDS   ON   THE    SHELF 

The  next  spring  he  wishes  he  had  the 
*'Go"  in  him;  he  would  visit  his  dear 
Sevigne's  Rochers,  as  he  would  Abbotsford 
and  Stratford.  The  "  fine  creature,"  much 
more  alive  to  him  than  most  friends,  has 
been  his  companion  at  the  seashore.  She 
now  occupies  Montaigne's  place,  and 
worthily;  "she  herself  a  lover  of  Mon- 
taigne, and  with  a  spice  of  his  free  thought 
and  speech  in  her."  He  sometimes  laments 
not  having  known  her  before;  but  reflects 
that  "perhaps  such  an  acquaintance  comes 
in  best  to  cheer  one  toward  the  end." 
Henceforward,  year  after  year,  in  spring 
especially,  he  talks  of  the  dear  lady's 
charms.  "My  blessed  Sevigne,"  "my  dear 
old  Sevigne,"  he  calls  her;  "welcome  as 
the  flowers  of  May."  Like  the  best  of 
Scott's  characters,  she  is  real  and  present 
to  him.  "When  my  oracle  last  night  was 
reading  to  me  of  Dandie  Dinmont's  blessed 
visit  to  Bertram  in  Portanferry  gaol,  I  said 
— '  I  know  it 's  Dandie,  and  I  should  n't 
be  at  all  surprised  to  see  him  come  into  this 
room.'  No  —  no  more  than— Madame  de 
Sevigne!  I  suppose  it  is  scarce  right  to  live 
so  among  shadows ;  but  after  near  seventy 


EDWARD    FITZGERALD  75 

years  so  passed,  que  voulez-vousf  One 
thinks  of  what  Emerson  said,  that  there  is 
creative  reading  as  well  as  creative  wTiting. 
As  is  true  of  all  readers,  every  kind 
of  human  capacity  being  limited,  Fitz- 
Gerald  found  many  likely  books  lying 
mysteriously  outside  the  range  of  his 
sympathies.  He  loved  Longfellow  (and 
so  "could  not  call  him  Mister")  and  ad- 
mired Emerson  (with  qualifications  — "I 
don't  like  the  *  Humble  Bee,'  and  won't 
like  the  '  Humble  Bee ' ") ;  and  he  delighted 
in  Lowell  (the  critical  essays),  and  "rather 
loved"  Holmes;  but  he  "could  never  take 
to  that  man  of  true  genius,  Hawthorne." 
"I  will  have  another  shot,"  he  said.  But 
it  was  useless.  He  confesses  his  failure  to 
Professor  Norton.  "I  feel  sure  the  fault 
must  be  mine,  as  I  feel  about  Goethe,  who 
is  yet  a  sealed  book  to  me."  He  expects 
to  "die  ungoethed,  so  far  as  poetry  goes." 
He  supposes  there  is  a  screw  loose  in  him 
on  this  point.  Again  he  writes:  "I  have 
failed  in  another  attempt  at  '  Gil  Bias.'  I 
believe  I  see  its  easy  grace,  humor,  etc. 
But  it  is  (like  La  Fontaine)  too  thin  a  wine 
for  me :  all  sparkling  with  little  adventures. 


76  FRIENDS    ON   THE   SHELF 

but  no  one  to  care  about;  no  color,  no 
breadth,  like  my  dear  Don,  whom  I  shall 
return  to  forthwith."  Happy  reader,  who 
could  give  so  pretty  a  reason  for  the  want 
of  faith  that  was  in  him.  If  he  lacked  pa- 
tience to  write  formal  criticism,  he  had  the 
neatest  kind  of  knack  at  critical  obiter  dicta. 
Books  were  his  best  friends;  or,  if  that 
be  too  much  to  say,  they  were  the  ones 
that  he  liked  best  to  have  about  him.  As 
for  human  intimates,  —  well,  it  is  hard 
to  know  how  to  express  it,  but  he  seemed, 
especially  as  he  grew  older,  not  to  crave 
very  much  of  their  society.  He  loved  to 
write  to  them,  —  not  too  often,  lest  they 
should  be  troubled  about  replying, — but 
he  would  never  visit  them;  and  what  is 
stranger,  he  cared  little,  nay,  he  almost 
dreaded,  to  have  them  visit  him.  His 
house  he  devoted  to  his  nieces,  for  such 
part  of  the  year  as  they  chose  to  occupy  it, 
reserving  but  one  room  to  himself.  This 
serves  for  "parlor,  bedroom  and  all,"  he 
tells  Mrs.  Kemble;  "which  I  really  pre- 
fer, as  it  reminds  me  of  the  cabin  of  my 
dear  little  ship  —  mine  no  more."  Still  the 
house  is  large  enough.  If  any  of  his  friends, 


EDWARD    FITZGERALD  77 

Tennyson,  Spedding,  Carlyle,  Mr.  Lowell, 
Mr.  Norton,  or  who  not,  should  happen 
to  be  in  the  neighborhood,  he  would  be 
delighted,  truly  delighted,  to  see  them; 
but  none  of  them  must  ever  undertake  the 
journey  on  purpose.  He  could  n't  render 
it  worth  their  while,  and  it  would  really 
make  him  unhappy.  He  was  never  in 
danger  of  forgetting  them,  and  he  had 
no  fear  of  their  forgetting  him.  If  they 
suffered,  he  suffered  with  them.  If  one 
of  them  died,  he  wrote  of  him  in  the  tender- 
est  and  most  poignant  strain. 

In  January,  1864,  all  his  letters  are  full 
of  Thackeray,  whose  death  had  occurred 
on  the  day  before  Christmas.  He  sits 
"moping  about  him,"  reading  his  books 
and  the  few  of  his  letters  that  he  has  pre- 
served. He  writes  to  Laurence:  "I  am 
surprised  almost  to  find  how  much  I  am 
thinking  of  him :  so  little  as  I  had  seen  him 
for  the  last  ten  years ;  not  once  for  the  last 
five.  I  had  been  told — by  you,  for  one — 
that  he  was  spoiled.  I  am  glad  therefore 
that  I  have  scarce  seen  him  since  he  was 
'  old  Thackeray.'  I  keep  reading  his  '  New- 
comes  '  of  nights,  and  as  it  were  hear  him 


78  FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

saying  so  much  of  it;  and  it  seems  to  me 
as  if  he  might  be  coming  up  my  stairs,  and 
about  to  come  (singing)  into  my  room,  as 
in  old  Charlotte  Street  thirty  years  ago."  ^ 
Hear  him  again  as  he  writes  of  Sped- 
ding,  the  wisest  man  he  has  ever  known, 
"a  Socrates  in  life  and  in  death,"  who  has 
been  run  over  by  a  cab  in  London,  and 
is  dying  at  the  hospital:  "My  dear  old 
Spedding,  though  I  have  not  seen  him 
these  twenty  years  and  more,  and  probably 
should  never  see  him  again;  but  he  lives, 
his  old  self,  in  my  heart  of  hearts;  and  all 
I  hear  of  him  does  but  embellish  the  recol- 
lection of  him,  if  it  could  be  embellished; 
for  he  is  but  the  same  that  he  was  from  a 
boy,  all  that  is  best  in  heart  and  head,  a 
man  that  would  be  incredible  had  one  not 
known  him."  And  when  all  is  over,  and 
Laurence  sends  him  tidings  of  the  event, 
this  is  his  answer:  "It  was  very,  very  good 
of  you  to  think  of  writing  to  me  at  all  on 

'  In  connection  with  whicli  it  is  good  to  remember  that  when 
Thackeray,  not  long  before  he  died,  was  asked  by  liis  daughter 
which  of  his  old  friends  he  had  loved  most,  he  replied,  "Why, 
dear  old  Fitz,  to  be  sure."  After  FitzGerald's  death  Tennyson 
wrote  of  him :  "  I  had  no  truer  friend :  he  was  one  of  the  kind- 
liest of  men,  and  I  have  never  known  one  of  so  fine  and  delicate 
a  wit." 


EDWARD    FITZGERALD  79 

this  occasion:  much  more,  writing  to  me 
so  fully,  almost  more  fully  than  I  dared  at 
first  to  read:  though  all  so  delicately  and 
as  you  always  write.  It  is  over!  I  shall  not 
write  about  it.  He  was  all  you  say."  How 
perfect!  And  how  it  goes  to  the  quick! 

Not  for  want  of  heart,  surely,  did  such 
a  man  choose  the  companionship  of  books 
rather  than  of  his  fellows.  He  was  born 
to  be  a  solitary,  or  believed  that  he  was; 
at  all  events,  it  was  too  late  now  for  him 
to  be  anything  else.  Whether  nature  or 
he  had  made  his  bed,  it  was  made,  and 
henceforth  he  must  lie  in  it.  "Twenty 
years'  solitude,"  he  says  to  Mrs.  Kemble, 
"makes  me  very  shy."  And  he  writes  to 
Sir  Frederick  Pollock,  who  has  proposed 
to  visit  him,  that  he  feels  nervous  at  the 
prospect  of  meeting  old  friends,  "after  all 
these  years."  He  fears  they  will  not  find 
him  in  person  what  he  is  by  letter.  Every 
recluse  knows  that  trouble.  With  books 
it  was  another  story.  In  their  presence  he 
felt  no  misgivings,  no  palsying  diffidence. 
They  would  never  expect  of  him  what  he 
could  not  render,  nor  find  him  altered 
from  his  old  self.     If  he  happened  to  be 


80  FRIENDS   ON   THE    SHELF 

awkward  or  dull,  as  he  often  was,  they 
would  never  know  it.  And  really,  with 
them  on  his  shelves,  and  with  his  habit  of 
living  by  himself,  he  did  not  need  intel- 
lectual society,  —  just  a  few  commonplace, 
kindly,  more  or  less  sensible  bodies  to 
speak  with  in  a  neighborly  way  about  the 
weather,  the  crops,  or  the  day's  events,  and 
to  play  cards  with  of  an  evening.  He  was 
one  of  the  fortunates  —  or  unfortunates — 
who  have  a  "talent  for  dullness."  The 
word  is  his  own.  "1  really  do  like  to  sit  in 
this  doleful  place  with  a  good  fire,  a  cat  and 
dog  on  the  rug,  and  an  old  woman  in  the 
kitchen."  He  reveled  in  the  pleasures  of 
memory.  He  loved  his  friends  as  they 
were  years  ago, —  "old  Thackeray,"  "old 
Jem,"  "old  Alfred,"  —  and  only  hoped 
they  would  love  him  in  the  same  manner. 
So  his  letters  are  full  of  the  books  he 
has  been  reading,  rather  than  of  the  people 
he  has  been  talking  with.  But  what  of  his 
own  books,  especially  of  the  one  that  has 
made  him  famous  ?  About  that,  it  must 
be  said  at  once,  the  correspondence  tells 
comparatively  little.  His  Persian  studies 
were  only  an  episode  in  his  life,  interesting 


EDWARD    FITZGERALD  81 

enough  at  tlie  time,  but  not  a  continuous 
passion,  like,  for  instance,  his  reading  of 
Crabbe,  and  his  long  persisted  in  — never 
relinquished  —  attempt  to  secure  for  that 
half -forgotten  Suffolk  poet  the  honor  right- 
fully belonging  to  him.  Concerning  that 
pious  attempt,  as  concerning  a  possible 
republication  of  some  of  his  translations 
from  the  Spanish  and  the  Greek,  he  left 
directions  with  his  literary  executor;  but 
not  a  word  about  Omar  Khayyam. 

The  whole  Persian  business,  indeed,  if 
one  may  speak  of  it  so,  appears  to  have  been 
largely  a  matter  of  friendship,  or  at  least 
to  have  been  begun  as  such.  Cowell  had 
become  absorbed  in  that  language,  and 
enticed  his  old  Spanish  pupil  to  follow 
him.  The  first  mention  of  the  subject 
to  be  found  in  the  published  letters  occurs 
in  1853.  FitzGerald  has  ordered  East- 
wick's  "Gulistan:"  "for  I  believe  I  shall 
potter  out  so  much  Persian."  Two  months 
afterward  he  writes  to  Frederic  Tennyson : 
*'I  amuse  myself  with  poking  out  some 
Persian  which  E.  Cowell  would  inaugurate 
me  with.  I  go  on  with  it  because  it  is  a 
point  in  common  with  him,  and  enables 


82  FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

us  to  study  a  little  together."  Friendly 
feeling  has  served  the  world  many  a  good 
turn,  but  rarely  a  better  one  than  this. 

Three  or  four  years  later  conies  the 
first  reference  to  Omar.  "Old  Omar," 
he  says,  "rings  like  true  metal."  Now  he 
is  translating  the  quatrains,  though  he  has 
little  to  say  about  them.  He  finds  it  amus- 
ing to  "take  what  liberties  he  likes  with 
these  Persians,"  who,  he  thinks,  are  not 
poets  enough  to  frighten  one  from  so  doing. 
On  a  1st  of  July  he  writes:  "June  over! 
A  thing  I  think  of  with  Omar-like  sorrow." 
Then  he  is  preparing  to  send  some  of  the 
more  innocent  of  the  quatrains  to  "  Fraser's 
Magazine,"  the  editor  of  which  has  asked 
him  for  a  contribution.  He  has  begun  to 
look  upon  Omar  as  rather  more  his  pro- 
perty than  Cowell's.  "He  and  I  are  more 
akin,  are  we  not  ?"  he  writes  to  his  teacher. 
"You  see  all  his  beauty,  but  you  don't  feel 
with  him  in  some  respects  as  I  do."  He 
is  taking  all  pains,  not  for  literalness,  but 
to  make  tlie  thing  live.  It  must  live;  if  not 
with  Omar's  life,  why,  then,  with  the  trans- 
lator's.  And  live  it  did,  and  does,  — 

"The  rose  of  Iran  on  an  English  stock." 


EDWARD    FITZGERALD  83 

The  Fraser  story  is  well  known,  —  a 
classical  example  of  the  rejection  of  a  fu- 
ture classic.  The  editor  took  the  manu- 
script, but  kept  it  in  its  pigeonhole  ("Thou 
knowest  not  which  shall  prosper"  being  as 
true  a  text  for  editors  as  for  other  men — 
"Sir,"  said  Doctor  Johnson,  "a  fallible 
being  will  fail  somewhere"),  and  at  last 
FitzGerald  asked  it  back,  added  some- 
thing to  it,  and  printed  it  anonymously. 
This  was  in  1859.  He  gave  one  copy  to 
Cowell  (who  "was  naturally  alarmed  at  it; 
he  being  a  very  religious  man"),  one  copy 
to  George  Borrow,  and  one  —  a  good 
while  afterward — to  "old  Donne."  Some 
copies  he  kept  for  himself.  The  remainder, 
two  hundred,  more  or  less,  he  presented 
to  Mr.  Quaritch,  who  had  printed  them 
for  him,  and  who  worked  them  off  upon 
his  customers,  as  best  he  could,  mostly  at 
two  cents  apiece. 

In  the  course  of  the  next  few  years  three 
other  editions  were  printed  —  all  anony- 
mously—  for  the  sake  of  alterations  and 
additions  (a  man  of  taste  is  sure  to  be  a 
patient  reviser),  but  there  is  next  to  nothing 
about  them  in  the  letters.     No  one  cares 


84  FRIENDS    ON   THE   SHELF 

for  such  things,  the  translator  says.  He 
hardly  knows  why  he  prints  them,  only 
that  he  likes  to  make  an  end  of  the  matter. 
So  he  writes  to  Cowell.  As  for  the  rest  of 
his  correspondents,  they  are  more  likely 
to  be  interested  in  other  things,  —  his 
garden,  his  boat,  his  reading.  By  1863  he 
is  pretty  well  tired  of  everything  Persian. 
"Oh  dear,"  he  says  to  his  teacher,  "when 
I  look  at  Homer,  Dante  and  Virgil,  Ms- 
chylus,  Shakespeare,  etc.,  those  Orientals 
look  —  silly !  Don't  resent  my  saying  so. 
Dont  they  ?  "  An  English  masterpiece  had 
been  made,  but  neither  the  maker  of  it 
nor  any  one  else  had  yet  suspected  the  fact. 
The  merits  of  the  work  seem  to  have 
been  first  publicly  recognized  in  1869  by 
Mr.  Charles  Eliot  Norton,  in  an  article 
contributed  to  the  "  North  American  Re- 
view." "The  work  of  a  poet  inspired  by 
the  work  of  a  poet,"  he  pronounces  it; 
"not  a  copy,  but  a  reproduction,  not  a 
translation,  but  the  redelivery  of  a  poetic 
inspiration."  "There  is  probably  nothing 
in  the  mass  of  English  translations  or 
reproductions  of  the  poetry  of  the  East 
to  be  compared  with  this  little  volume  in 


EDWARD   FITZGERALD  85 

point  of  value  as  English  poetry.  In  the 
strength  of  rhythmical  structure,  in  force 
of  expression,  in  musical  modulation,  and 
in  mastery  of  language,  the  external  charac- 
ter of  the  verse  corresponds  with  the  still 
rarer  qualities  of  imagination  and  of  spirit- 
ual discernment  which  it  displays." 

It  would  be  pleasant  to  know  how 
appreciation  of  this  kind,  coming  unex- 
pectedly from  a  stranger  over  seas,  af- 
fected the  still  anonymous,  obscurity- 
loving  translator;  but  if  he  ever  read  it, 
or,  having  read  it,  said  anything  about  it, 
the  letters  make  no  sign.  He  and  his  work 
were  still  comfortably  obscure.  His  old 
friend  Carlyle  heard  not  a  word  about 
the  matter  till  1873,  when  Professor  Nor- 
ton, who  meanwhile  had  somehow  dis- 
covered the  name  of  the  man  he  had  been 
praising,  mentioned  the  poem  to  him,  and 
insisted  upon  giving  him  a  copy.  Carlyle, 
much  pleased,  at  once  wrote  to  FitzGerald 
a  letter  which  was  undoubtedly  meant  to 
be  very  kind  and  handsome,  but  which, 
read  in  the  light  of  the  present,  sounds  a 
little  perfunctory,  and  even  a  bit  patroniz- 
ing.   The  translation,  he  says,  is  a  "meri- 


86  FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

torious  and  successful  performance."  We 
can  almost  fancy  that  we  are  listening  to  a 
good-natured  but  truthful  man  who  feels 
it  his  duty  to  speak  well  of  a  pretty  good 
composition  written  by  a  fairly  bright  gram- 
mar school  boy. 

It  was  all  one  to  FitzGerald.  Perhaps 
he  thought  the  compliment  as  good  as  he 
deserved.  He  was  getting  old  — as  he  had 
been  doing  for  the  last  twenty-five  years. 
Persian  poetry  was  little  or  nothing  to  him 
now  —  "a  ten  years'  dream."  The  fruit 
had  dropped  from  the  tree;  let  the  earth 
care  for  it.  So  he  returns  to  his  Crabbe,  to 
Sainte-Beuve,  to  Madame  de  Sevigne,  to 
Don  Quixote,  to  Wesley's  Journal,  and 
the  rest.  Such  little  time  as  he  has  to  live, 
he  will  live  quietly.  And  ten  years  after- 
ward, when  he  died,  —  suddenly,  as  he 
had  always  hoped,  —  some  one  put  on 
his  gravestone  that  most  Omaric  of  Scrip- 
ture texts,  "It  is  He  that  hath  made  us, 
and  not  we  ourselves."  Perhaps  the  words 
were  of  his  own  choosing.  Certainly  no 
others  could  have  suited  him  so  well.  If 
he  had  been  eccentric,  idle,  unambitious, 
ease-loving,  incapable,  a  pitcher  "leaning 


EDWARD    FITZGERALD  87 

all  awry,"  he  had  been  what  the  Potter 
made  him. 

"The  Ball  no  question  makes  of  Ayes  and  Noes, 
But  Here  or  There  as  strikes  the  Player  goes; 

And  He  that  tossed  you  down  into  the  Field, 
He  knows  about  it  all  —  He  knows  —  HE  knows!" 

Since  his  death  his  fame  has  increased 
mightily.  All  the  world  reads  Omar  Khay- 
yam and  praises  FitzGerald.  "His  strange 
genius,  so  fitfully  and  coyly  revealed,  has 
given  a  new  quality  to  English  verse,  al- 
most all  recent  manifestations  of  which  it 
pervades."  So  says  one  of  the  later  his- 
torians of  our  nineteenth  century  liter- 
ature. And  the  man  himself  thought  he 
had  done  nothing!  Truly  the  race  is  not 
to  the  swift. 

"Behold  the  Grace  of  Allah  comes  and  goes 
As  to  ItseK  is  good:  and  no  one  knows 
Which  way  it  turns:   in  that  mysterious  Court 
Not  he  most  finds  who  furthest  travels  for  't. 
For  one  may  crawl  upon  his  knees  Life-long, 
And  yet  may  never  reach,  or  all  go  wrong: 
Another  just  arriving  at  the  Place 
He  toiled  for,  and  —  the  Door  shut  in  his  Face : 
Whereas  Another,  scarcely  gone  a  Stride, 
And  suddenly  —  Behold  he  is  inside ! " 


THOREAU 


THOREAU 

"  Whoever  will  do  his  own  work  aright  will  find  that  his  first 
lesson  is  to  know  what  he  is,  and  that  which  is  proper  to  himself; 
and  whoever  rightly  understands  himself  will  never  mistake 
another  man's  work  for  his  own,  but  will  love  and  improve 
himself  above  all  other  things,  will  refuse  superfluous  employ- 
ments, and  reject  all  unprofitable  thoughts  and  propositions." 

Montaigne. 

It  lay  at  the  root  of  Thoreau's  peculiarity 
that  he  insisted  upon  being  himself.  Hav- 
ing certain  opinions,  he  held  them;  hav- 
ing certain  tastes,  he  encouraged  them; 
having  a  certain  faculty,  he  made  the  most 
of  it:  all  of  which,  natural  and  reasonable 
as  it  may  sound,  is  as  far  as  possible  from 
what  is  expected  of  the  average  citizen, 
who  may  be  almost  anything  he  will,  to  be 
sure,  if  he  will  first  observe  the  golden  rule 
of  good  society,  to  be  "like  other  folks." 
Society  is  still  a  kind  of  self-constituted 
militia,  a  mutual  protective  association, — 
an  army,  in  short;  and  in  an  army,  as 
everybody  knows,  the  first  duty  of  man  is 
to  keep  step. 


92  FRIENDS   ON   THE    SHELF 

What  made  matters  worse  in  Thoreau's 
case  was,  that  his  tastes  and  opinions,  on 
which  he  so  stoutly  insisted,  were  in  them- 
selves far  out  of  the  common.  Not  only 
would  he  be  himself,  enough,  under  present 
conditions,  to  make  almost  any  man  an 
oddity,  but  the  "himself"  was  essentially 
a  very  queer  person.  He  liked  solitude;  in 
other  words,  he  liked  to  think.  He  loved 
the  society  of  trees  and  all  manner  of  grow- 
ing things.  He  found  fellowship  in  them, 
they  were  of  his  kin ;  which  is  not  at  all  the 
same  as  to  say  that  he  enjoyed  looking  at 
them  as  objects  of  beauty.  He  lived  in  a 
world  of  his  own,  a  world  of  ideas,  and  was 
strangely  indifferent  to  much  that  other  men 
found  absorbing.  He  could  get  along  with- 
out a  daily  newspaper,  but  not  without  a 
daily  walk.  He  spent  hours  and  hours  of 
honest  daylight  in  what  looked  for  all  the 
world  like  idleness;  and  he  did  it  indus- 
triously and  on  principle.  He  was  more 
anxious  to  live  well  —  according  to  an  in- 
ward standard  of  his  own  —  than  to  lodge 
well,  or  to  dress  well,  or  to  stand  well  with 
his  townsmen.  A  good  name,  even,  was 
relatively  unimportant.  (He  found  easy  sun- 


THOREAU  93 

dry  New  Testament  scriptures  which  the 
church  would  still  be  stumbling  over,  only 
that  it  has  long  since  worn  a  smooth  path 
round  them. 

He  set  a  low  value  on  money.  It  might 
be  of  service  to  him,  he  once  confessed, 
underscoring  the  doubt,  but  in  general 
he  accepted  poverty  as  the  better  part. 
*'We  are  often  reminded,"  he  said,  "that 
if  there  were  bestowed  on  us  the  wealth  of 
Croesus,  our  aims  must  still  be  the  same, 
and  our  means  essentially  the  same." 
(^Houses  and  lands,  even,  as  he  considered 
them,  were  often  no  better  than  incum- 
brances. Some  of  his  well-to-do,  highly 
respected,  self-satisfied  neighbors  were  as 
good  as  in  prison,  he  thought.  In  what 
sense  were  men  to  be  called  free,  if  their 
"property"  had  put  them  under  bonds 
to  stay  in  such  and  such  a  place  and  do 
only  such  and  such  things  ?  Life  was  more 
than  meat,  as  he  reckoned,  and  having 
trained  himself  to  "strict  business  habits" 
(his  own  w^ords),  he  did  not  believe  in 
swapping  a  better  thing  for  a  poorer  one. 
To  him  it  was  amazing  that  hard-headed, 
sensible  men  should  stand  at  a  desk  the 


94  FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

greater  part  of  their  days,  and  "glimmer 
and  rust,  and  finally  go  out  there."  "If 
they  know  anything,"  he  exclaimed,  "what 
under  the  sun  do  they  do  that  for?"  He 
speaks  as  if  the  question  were  unanswer- 
able; but  no  doubt  many  readers  will  find 
it  easy  enough,  the  only  real  difficulty  being 
a  deplorable  scarcity  of  desks.  For  Tho- 
reau's  part,  at  any  rate,  other  men  might 
save  dollars  if  they  would;  he  meant  to 
save  his  soul.  It  should  not  glimmer  and 
rust  and  go  out,  if  a  manly  endeavor  was 
good  for  anything.  And  he  saved  it.  To 
the  end  he  kept  it  alive ;  and  though  Jhe 
died  young,  he  lived  a  long  life  and  did  a 
long  life's  work,  and  what  is  more  to  the 
.  present  purpose,  he  left  behind  him  a  long 
memory. 

His  economies,  which  were  so  many 
and  so  rigorous,  were  worthy  of  a  man. 
In  kind,  they  were  such  as  any  man  must 
practice  who,  having  a  task  assigned  him, 
is  set  upon  doing  it.  If  the  river  is  to  run 
the  mill,  it  must  contract  itself.  The  law 
is  general.  To  make  sure  of  the  best  we 
must  put  away  not  only  whatever  is  bad, 
but  many  things  that  of  themselves  are 


THOREAU  95 

good,  —  a  right  hand,  if  need  be,  or  a 
right  eye,  said  one  of  old.  (For  the  artist, 
indeed,  as  for  the  saint,  —  for  all  seekers 
after  perfection,  that  is,  —  the  good  and 
the  best  are  often  the  most  uncompromis- 
ing of  opposites,  by  no  means  to  be  enter- 
tained under  the  same  roof.  Manage  it  as 
we  will,  to  receive  one  is  to  dismiss  the  other. 
Rightly  considered,  Thoreau's  singu- 
larity consisted,  not  in  his  lodging  in  a 
cabin,  nor  in  his  wearing  coarse  clothes, 
nor  in  his  non-observance  of  so-called 
social  amenities,  nor  even  in  his  passion 
for  the  wild,  but  in  his  view  of  the  world 
and  of  his  own  place  in  it.  He  was  a  poet- 
naturalist,  an  idealist,  an  individualist,  a 
transcendental  philosopher,  what  you  will; 
but  first  of  all  he  was  a  prophet.  "I  am 
the  voice  of  one  crying  in  the  wilderness," 
he  might  have  said;  and  the  locusts  and 
wild  honey  followed  as  things  of  course. 
It  followed,  also,  that  the  fathers  neglected 
him,  —  stoning  having  gone  out  of  fashion, 
• —  and  the  children  garnish  his  sepulchre. 
C  A  prophet  is  a  very  worthy  person  —  after 
he  is  dead.  Then  come  biographies,  eulo- 
gies, and  new  editions  of  his  works,  includ- 


96  FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

ing  his  journals  and  private  letters.  Fame 
is  a  plant  that  blossoms  on  graves;  as  a 
manual  of  such  botany  might  say,  "a  late- 
flowering  perennial,  nowhere  common,  to 
be  looked  for  in  old  cemeteries."  ; 

A  prophet,  a  writer,  a  student  of  nature : 
this  was  Thoreau,  and  the  three  were  one. 

He  preached  faith,  simplicity,  devo- 
tion to  the  ideal;  and  with  all  a  prophet's 
freedom  he  denounced  everything  antag- 
onistic to  these.  He  was  not  one  of  those 
nice  people  who  are  contented  to  speak 
handsomely  of  God  and  say  nothing  about 
the  devil.  It  was  not  in  his  nature  to  halt 
between  two  opinions.  He  could  always 
say  yes  or  no  —  especially  no.  As  was  said 
of  Pascal,  there  were  no  middle  terms  in 
his  philosophy. 

Withal,  no  man  was  more  of  a  believer 
and  less  of  a  skeptic.  Faith  and  hope,  "in- 
finite expectation,"  were  his  daily  breath. 
Charity  was  his,  also,  but  less  conspicu- 
ously, and  after  a  pattern  of  his  own, 
philanthropy,  as  he  saw  it  practiced,  being 
one  of  his  prime  aversions.  He  knew  not 
the  meaning  of  pessimism.  The  world  was 
good.    "I  am  grateful  for  what  I  am  and 


THOREAU  97 

have.  My  thanksgiving  is  perpetual."  To 
the  final  hour  existence  was  a  boon  to  him. 
"For  joy  I  could  embrace  the  earth," 
he  declared,  though  he  seldom  indulged 
himself  in  emotional  expression;^"!  shall 
delight  to  be  buried  in  it."  "It  was  not 
possible  to  be  sad  in  his  presence,"  said 
his  sister,  speaking  of  his  last  illness.  His 
may  have  been  "a  solitaiy  and  critical 
way  of  living,"  to  quote  Emerson's  careful 
phrase,  but  in  his  work  there  is  little  trace  of 
anything  morbid  or  unwholesome.  Some 
who  might  hesitate  to  rank  themselves 
among  his  disciples  keep  by  them  a  copy  of 
"  Walden,"  or  the  "  Week,"  to  dip  into  for 
refreshment  and  invigoration  when  life  runs 
low  and  desire  begins  to  fail.  Readers  of 
this  kind  please  him  better,  we  may  guess, 
if  he  knows  of  them,  than  those  who  skim 
his  pages  for  the  natural  history  and  the 
scenery.  Such  is  the  fate  of  prophets.  The 
fulminations  and  entreaties  of  Isaiah  are 
now  highly  recommended  as  specimens  of 
Oriental  belles-lettres.  Yet  worse  things  may 
befall  a  man  than  to  be  partially  appre(?i- 
ated.  As  Thoreau  himself  said:  "It  is  the 
characteristic  of  great  poems  that  they  will 


98  FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

yield  of  their  sense  in  due  proportion  to  the 
hasty  and  the  dehberate  reader.  To  the 
practical  they  will  be  common  sense,  and 
to  the  wise  wisdom;  as  either  the  traveler 
may  wet  his  lips,  or  an  army  may  fill  its 
water-casks  at  a  full  stream."  His  own  was 
hardly  a  "full  stream,"  perhaps;  a  moun- 
tain brook  rather  than  one  of  the  world's 
rivers;  clear,  cold,  running  from  the  spring, 
untainted  by  the  swamp;  less  majestic  than 
the  Amazons,  but  not  less  unfailing,  and 
for  those  who  can  climb,  and  who  know  the 
taste  of  purity,  infinitely  sweeter  to  drink 
from. 

Simplicity  of  life  and  devotion  to  the 
ideal,  the  one  a  means  to  the  other,  — 
these  he  would  preach,  in  season  and,  if 
possible,  out  of  season.  "Simplicity,  sim- 
plicity, simplicity!  I  say,  let  your  affairs 
be  as  two  or  three,  and  not  a  hundred  or  a 
thousand  ;  instead  of  a  million  count  half 
a  dozen,  and  keep  your  accounts  on  your 
thumb-nail."  This,  which,  after  all,  is  no- 
thing but  the  old  doctrine  of  the  one  thing 
needful,  —  since  it  is  one  mark  of  a  prophet 
that  he  deals  not  in  novelties,  but  in  truth, 
—  all  this  spiritual  economy  is  connected 


THOREAU  99 

at  the  root  with  CThoreau's  beHef  in  free 
will,  his  vital  assurance  that  the  nobility 
or  meanness  of  a  man's  life  is  committed 
largely  to  his  own  choice.  ,  He  may  waste  it 
on  the  trivial,  or  spend  it  on  the  essential. 
There  is  "no  more  encouraging  fact  than 
the  unquestionable  ability  of  man  to  elevate 
his  life  by  a  conscious  endeavor. "/And  what 
a  man  is  inwardly,  that  to  him  will  the 
world  be  outwardly;  his  mood  affects  the 
very  "quality  of  the  day."  Could  anything 
be  truer  or  more  finely  suggested  ?  For 
himself,  Thoreau  was  determined  to  get 
the  goodness  out  of  time  as  it  passed.  He 
refused  to  be  hurried.  The  hour  was  too 
precious.  "If  the  bell  rings,  why  should  we 
run .?"  Neither  would  he  knowingly  take 
up  with  a  second-best,  or  be  put  off  with 
a  sham,  - —  as  if  there  were  nothing  real) 
He  would  not  "drive  a  nail  into  mere  lath 
and  plastering,"  he  declared.  Such  a  deed 
would  keep  him  awake  nights.  A  very  rea- 
sonable and  practical  kind  of  doctrine, 
certainly,  whether  it  be  called  transcen- 
dentalism or  common  sense.  (jPerhaps  we 
discredit  it  with  a  long  word  by  way  of  re- 
fusing the  obligation  it  would  lay  us  under.  ^ 


100         FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

And  possibly  it  is  for  a  similar  reason 
that  the  world  in  general  has  agreed  to 
regard  Thoreau  not  as  a  preacher  of  right- 
eousness, but  as  an  interpreter  of  nature.  ^ 
For  those  who  have  settled  down  to  take 
things  as  they  are,  having  knocked  under 
and  gone  with  the  stream,  in  Thoreau 's 
language,  it  is  pleasanter  to  read  of  beds 
of  water-lilies  flashing  open  at  sunrise,  or  of 
a  squirrel's  pranks  upon  a  bough,  than  of 
daily  aspiration  after  an  ideal  excellence.^ 
Whatever  the  reason,  Thoreau  is  to  the 
many  a  man  who  lived  out  of  doors,  and 
wrote  of  outdoor  things. 

His  attainments  as  a  naturalist  have  been 
by  turns  exaggerated  and  belittled,  one  ex- 
treme following  naturally  upon  the  other. 
As  for  the  exaggeration,  nothing  else  was 
to  be  expected,  things  being  as  they  were. 
It  is  what  happens  in  every  such  case.  If 
a  man  knows  some  of  the  birds,  his  neigh- 
bors, who  know  none  of  them,  celebrate 
him  at  once  as  an  ornithologist.  If  he  is 
reputed  to  "analyze"  flowers,  —  pull  them 
to  pieces  under  a  pocket-lens,  and  by  means 
of  a  key  find  out  their  polysyllabic  names, 
—  he  straightway   becomes  famous   as  a 


THOREAU  101 

botanist;  all  of  which  is  a  little  as  if  the 
ticket-seller  and  the  grocer's  clerk  should 
be  hailed  as  financiers  because  of  their  fa- 
cility in  making  change. 
(^  Thoreau  knew  his  local  fauna  and  flora 
after  a  method  of  his  own,  a  method  which, 
for  lack  of  a  better  word,  may  be  called 
sympathetic. ,  Nobody  w^as  ever  more  suc- 
cessful in  getting  inside  of  a  bird ;  and  that, 
from  his  point  of  view  and  for  his  purpose, 
—  and  not  less  for  ours  who  read  him,  — 
was  the  one  important  thing.  After  that  it 
mattered  little  if  some  of  his  flying  neigh- 
bors escaped  his  notice  altogether,  while 
others  led  him  a  vain  chase  year  after  year, 
and  are  still,  in  his  published  journals,  a 
puzzle  to  readers. (Who  knows  what  his 
night  warbler  was,  or,  with  certainty,  his 
seringo  bird,^;  The  latter,  indeed,  a  native 
of  his  own  Concord  hay-fields,  he  seems 
to  have  been  pretty  well  acquainted  with 
as  a  bird;  its  song  w^as  familiar  to  him, 
and  less  frequently  he  caught  sight  of  the 
singer  itself  perched  upon  a  fence-post  or 
threading  its  way  through  the  grass;  but 
he  had  found  no  means  of  ascertaining  its 
name,  and  so  was  driven  to  the  primitive 


102         FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

expedient  of  christening  it  with  an  inven- 
tion of  his  own.  Wis  description  of  its 
appearance  and  notes  leaves  us  in  no 
great  doubt  as  to  its  identity;  probably  it 
was  the  savanna  sparrow;  but  how  com- 
pletely in  the  dark  he  himself  was  upon 
this  point  may  be  gathered  from  an  entry 
in  his  journal  of  1854.  He  had  gone  to 
Nantucket,  in  late  December,  and  there 
saw,  running  along  the  ruts,  flocks  of  "a 
gray,  bunting-like  bird  about  the  size  of 
the  snow-bunting.  Can  it  be  the  seaside 
finch,"  he  asks,  "or  the  savanna  sparrow, 
or  the  shore  lark.?"  Savanna  sparrow,  or 
shore  lark!  A  Baldwin  apple,  or  a  russet! 
But  what  then  ?  There  are  gaps  in  every 
scholar's  knowledge,  and  the  man  who  has 
"named  all  the  birds  without  a  gun"  is 
yet  to  be  heard  from.)  It  is  fair  to  remind 
ourselves,  also,  that  Thoreau's  studies  in 
this  line  were  pursued  under  limitations 
and  disadvantages  to  which  the  amateur 
of  our  later  day  is  happily  a  stranger. 
f  Ornithologically,  it  is  a  long  time  since 
Thoreau's  death,  though  it  is  less  than 
forty-five  years.  ) 

If  any  be  disposed  to  insist,   as  some 


THOREAU  103 

have  insisted,  that  he  made  no  discoveries 
\(he  discovered  a  new  way  of  writing  about 
nature,  for  one  thing);  and  was  more  curi- 
ous than  scientific  in  his  spirit  and  method 
as  an  observer,  it  is  perhaps  sufficient  to 
reply  that  he  cultivated  his  own  field.  From 
first  to  last  he  refused  the  claims  of  sci- 
ence, ^ —  whether  rightly  or  wrongly  is  not 
here  in  question, — and  with  the  exception 
of  one  or  two  brief  essays  wrote  nothing 
directly  upon  natural  history.  He  wor- 
shiped Nature,  even  while  he  played  the 
spy  upon  her,  fearing  her  enchantments 
and  "looking  at  her  with  the  side  of  his 
eye."  Run  over  the  titles  of  his  books: 
"A  Week  on  the  Concord  and  Merrimack 
Rivers,"  "Walden,"  "The  Maine  Woods," 
"Cape  Cod,"  "A  Yankee  in  Canada," 
"Excursions."  The  first  two  are  studies 
in  high  and  plain  living, —  practical  phi- 
losophy, spiritual  economy,  the  right  use 
of  society  and  solitude,  books  and  nature.^ 
The  rest  are  narratives  of  travel,  with  a 
record  of  what  the  traveler  saw  and  thought 
and  felt.  In  "  Excursions,"  to  be  sure,  there 
is  an  early  paper  on  "The  Natural  His- 
tory of  Massachusetts,"  to  which,  by  strain- 


104         FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

ing  a  point,  we  may  add  one  on  "The 
Succession  of  Forest  Trees,"  another  on 
"Autumnal  Tints,"  and  still  another  on 
"Wild  Apples."  Elsewhere,  though  the 
landscape  is  sure  to  be  carefully  studied, 
it  is  always  a  landscape  with  figures.  In 
truth,  while  he  wrote  so  much  of  outward 
nature,  and  so  often  seemed  to  find  his  fel- 
low-mortals no  better  than  intruders  upon 
the  scene,  his  real  subject  was  man. )"Man 
is  all  in  all,"  he  says;  "Nature  nothing  but 
as  she  draws  him  out  and  reflects  him." 
And  again  he  said,  "Any  affecting  human 
event  may  blind  our  eyes  to  natural  ob- 
jects."") 

The  latter  sentence  was  written  shortly 
after  the  death  of  John  Brown,  in  whose 
fate  Thoreau  had  been  so  completely  ab- 
sorbed that  his  old  Concord  world,  when 
he  came  back  to  it,  had  almost  a  foreign 
look  to  him,  and  he  remarked  with  a  start 
of  surprise  that  the  little  grebe  was  still 
diving  in  the  river.  With  all  his  devotion 
to  nature  and  philosophy,  it  was  the  "hu- 
man event"  that  really  concerned  him. 
But  of  course  he  had  ideas  of  his  own 
as  to  what  constituted  an  event.    As  for 


THOREAU  105 

men's  so-called  affairs,  and  all  that  passes 
current  under  the  name  of  news,  nothing 
could  be  less  eventful;  for  all  such  things 
he  could  never  sufficiently  express  his 
contempt.  "In  proportion  as  our  inward 
life  fails,"  he  says,  "we  go  more  constantly 
and  desperately  to  the  post-office."  And 
he  adds,  in  that  peculiarly  airy  manner  of 
his  to  which  one  is  tempted  sometimes  to 
apply  the  old  Yankee  adjective  "toplofty," 
"I  would  not  run  round  the  corner  to  see 
the  world  blow  up."  After  which,  the 
reader  whose  bump  of  incuriosity  is  less 
highly  developed  may  console  himself  by 
remembering  that  when  a  powder-mill 
blew  up  in  the  next  town,  Thoreau,  hearing 
the  noise,  ran  downstairs,  jumped  into  a 
wagon,  and  drove  post-haste  to  the  scene 
of  the  disaster.    So  true  is  it  that  it  is 

"tlie  most  difficult  of  tasks  to  keep 
Heights  which  the  soul  is  competent  to  gain."  j 

Careful  economist  as  Thoreau  was, 
bravely  as  he  trusted  his  own  intuitions 
and  kept  to  his  own  path,  much  as  he 
preached  simplicity  and  heroically  as  he 
practiced  it,  he  shared  the  common  lot 


106         FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

and  fell  short  of  his  own  ideal.  Life  is 
never  quite  so  simple  as  he  attempted 
to  make  it,  and  he,  like  other  men,  was 
conscious  of  a  divided  mind.  He  had  by 
nature  a  bias  toward  the  investigation  of 
natural  phenomena,  a  passion  for  particu- 
lars, which,  if  he  had  been  less  a  poet  and 
philosopher,  might  have  made  him  a  man 
of  science.  He  knew  it,  and  was  inwardly 
chafed  by  it.  Perhaps  it  was  because  of 
this  chafing  that  he  fell  into  the  habit 
of  speaking  so  almost  spitefully  of  science 
and  scientific  men.  Not  to  lay  stress  upon 
his  frequent  paradoxes  about  the  superi- 
ority of  superstition  to  knowledge,  the  ad- 
vantages of  astrology  over  astronomy,  the 
slight  importance  of  precision  in  matters 
of  detail  ("I  can  afford  to  be  inaccurate"), 
—  to  say  nothing  of .  these  things,  which, 
taken  as  they  were  meant,  are  not  without 
a  measure  of  truth,  and  with  which  no 
lover  of  Thoreau  will  be  much  disposed 
to  quarrel  (those  who  cannot  abide  the 
nudge  of  a  paradox  or  an  inch  or  two  of 
exaggeration  may  as  well  let  him  alone),  it 
is  plain  that  in  certain  moods,  especially  in 
his  later  years,  his  own  semi-scientific  re- 


THOREAU  107 

searches  were  felt  to  be  a  hindrance  to  the 
play  of  his  higher  faculties.  "It  is  impos- 
sible for  the  same  person  to  see  things 
from  the  poet's  point  of  view  and  that  of 
the  man  of  science,"  he  writes  in  1842. 
*'Man  cannot  afford  to  be  a  naturalist," 
he  says  again,  in  1853.  "I  feel  that  I 
am  dissipated  by  so  many  observ^ations. 
.  .  .  Oh,  for  a  little  Lethe!"  And  a  week 
afterward  he  falls  into  the  same  strain, 
in  a  tone  of  reminiscence  that  is  of  the 
very  rarest  with  him. /'Ah,  those  youth- 
ful days,"  he  breaks  out,  "are  they  never 
to  return.?  when  the  walker  does  not  too 
enviously  observe  particulars,  but  sees, 
hears,  scents,  tastes,  and  feels  only  him- 
self, the  phenomena  that  showed  them- 
selves in  him,  his  expanding  body,  his 
intellect  and  heart.  No  worm  or  insect, 
quadruped  or  bird,  confined  his  view,  but 
the  unbounded  universe  was  his.  A  bird 
has  now  become  a  mote  in  his  eye."  What 
devotee  of  natural  science,  if  he  be  also  a 
man  of  sensibility  and  imagination,  does 
not  feel  the  sincerity  of  this  cry  ?  - 

But  having  delivered  himself  thus  pas- 
sionatelv,  what  does  the  diarist  set  down 


108        FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

next  ?  Without  a  break  he  goes  on :  "  Dug 
into  what  I  take  to  be  a  woodchuck's  bur- 
row in  the  low  knoll  below  the  cliffs.  It  was 
in  the  side  of  the  hill,  and  sloped  gently 
downward  at  first  diagonally  into  the  hill 
about  five  feet,  perhaps  westerly,  then 
turned  and  ran  north  about  three  feet,  then 
northwest  further  into  the  hill  four  feet, 
then  north  again  four  feet,  then  northeast 
I  know  not  how  far,  the  last  five  feet,  per- 
haps, ascending,"  —  with  as  much  more 
of  the  same  tenor  and  equally  detailed. 
A  laughable  paragraph,  surely,  to  follow 
a  lament  over  a  too  envious  observation  of 
particulars;  with  its  "perhaps"  four  times 
repeated,  its  five  feet  westerly,  three  feet 
northerly,  and  so  on,  like  a  conveyancer's 
description  of  a  wood-lot:  and  all  about 
a  hole  in  the  ground,  which  he  "took  to 
be"  a  woodchuck's  burrow! 

In  vain  shall  a  man  bestir  himself  to  run 
away  from  his  own  instincts.  In  vain,  in 
such  a  warfare,  shall  he  trust  to  the  freedom 
of  the  will.  Happily  for  himself,  and  happily 
for  the  world,  Thoreau,  though  he  "could 
not  afford  to  be  a  naturalist,"  could  never 
cease  from  his  "too  envious  observation.') 


THOREAU  109 

By  inclination  and  habit  he  liked  to  see 
and  do  things  for  himself,  as  if  they  had 
never  been  seen  or  done  before.  That  was 
one  mark  of  his  individualistic  temper, 
not  to  say  a  chief  mark  of  his  genius.  He 
describes  in  his  journal  an  experiment  in 
making  sugar  from  the  sap  of  red  maple 
trees.  Here,  too,  he  goes  into  the  minutest 
details,  not  omitting  the  size  of  the  holes 
he  bored  and  the  frequency  with  which  the 
drops  fell,  —  about  as  fast  as  his  pulse 
beat.  His  father,  he  mentions  (the  son 
was  then  forty  years  old),  cliided  him  for 
wasting  his  time."  There  was  no  occasion 
for  the  experiment,  the  father  thought; 
it  w^as  well  known  that  the  thing  could 
be  done;  and  as  for  the  sugar,  it  could  be 
bought  cheaper  at  the  village  shop.-  "He 
said  it  took  me  from  my  studies,"  the  jour7 
nal  records.  "I  said  that  I  made  it  my 
study,  and  felt  as  if  I  had  been  to  a  uni- 
versity." Tf  fault-finding  is  in  order,  an 
individualist  prefers  to  administer  it  on  his 
own  account.  One  remembers  Thoreau's 
characteristic  declaration  that  he  had  never 
received  the  first  word  of  valuable  counsel 
from  any  of   his   elders.    In   the    present 


no         FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

instance,  surely,  as  much  as  this  must  be 
said  for  him,  —  that  by  habits  of  this  un- 
practical-seeming kind  knowledge  is  made 
peculiarly  one's  own,  and,  old  or  new,  keeps 
something  of  the  freshness  of  discovery 
upon  it.  The  critic  may  smile,  but  even 
he  will  not  dispute  the  charm  of  writing 
done  in  such  a  spirit,  —  the  very  spirit  in 
which  the  old  books  were  written,  in  the 
childhood  of  the  world. 

Even  the  edibility  of  white-oak  acorns 
affected  Thoreau,  at  the  age  of  forty,  as 
a  new  fact.  So  far  as  his  feeling  about 
it  was  concerned,  the  fruit  might  have 
been  that  morning  created.  "The  whole 
world  is  sweeter"  to  him  for  having  "dis- 
covered "  it.  "To  have  found  two  Indian 
gouges  and  tasted  sweet  acorns,  is  it  not 
enough  for  one  afternoon.^"  he  asks  him- 
self. And  the  next  day,  shrewd  economist 
and  exaggerator  that  he  is,  he  tries  his 
new  dainty  again,  and  behold,  a  second 
discovery:  the  acorns  "appear  to  dry 
sweet!"  One  need  not  be  a  critic,  but  only 
a  homely-witted,  country-bred  Yankee,  to 
smile  at  this.  But  indeed,  it  is  a  relief  to 
be  able   to   smile   now  and   then   at   one 


THOREAU  111 

who  held  himself  so  high  and  aloof,  —  "a 
Switzer  on  the  edge  of  the  glacier,"  as  he 
called  himself;  who  found  no  wisdom  too 
lofty  for  him,  no  companionship  quite 
lofty  enough;  and  who,  in  his  longing  for 
something  better  than  the  best,  could 
exclaim,  "  Give  me  a  sentence  which  no 
intelligence  can  understand."  Not  that  we 
feel  any  diminution  of  our  respect  or  affec- 
tion; but  it  pleases  us  to  have  met  our 
Switzer  for  once  on  something  near  our 
own  level.  In  an  author,  as  in  a  friend,  an 
amiable  weakness,  if  there  be  strength 
enough  behind  it,  is  only  another  point  of 
attraction. 

As  a  writer,  Thoreau  is  by  himself. 
There  are  no  other  books  like  "Walden" 
and  the  "Week."  The  reader  may  like 
them  or  leave  them  (unless  he  is  pretty 
sure  of  himself,  he  may  be  advised  to  try 
*' Walden  "  first),  he  will  find  nowhere  else 
the  same  combination  of  pure  nature  and 
austere  philosophy.  It  is  hard  even  to  see 
with  what  to  compare  them,  or  to  conceive 
of  any  one  else  as  having  written  them. 
If  Marcus  Aurelius,  with  half  his  sweet- 
ness of  temper  eliminated,  and  something 


112        FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

of  sharpness,  together  with  liberal  mea- 
sures of  cool  intellectuality,  injected,  could 
have  been  united  with  Gilbert  White,  rather 
less  radically  transformed,  and  if  the  re- 
sultant complex  person  had  made  it  his 
business  to  write,  we  can  perhaps  imagine 
that  his  work  would  not  have  been  in  all 
respects  unlike  that  of  the  sage  of  Walden; 
in  saying  which  we  have  but  taken  a  cir- 
cuitous course  back  to  our  former  position, 
that  Thoreau  was  a  man  of  his  own  kind. 

He  was  an  author  from  the  beginning. 
Of  that,  as  he  said  himself,  he  was  never  in 
doubt.  His  ceaseless  observation  of  nature 
—  which  some  have  decried  as  lacking  pur- 
pose and  method  —  and  his  daily  journal 
were  deliberately  chosen  means  to  that  end. 
"  Here  have  I  been  these  forty  years  learn- 
ing the  language  of  these  fields  tliat  I  may 
the  better  express  myself."  That  was  what 
he  aimed  at,  let  his  subject  be  what  it 
might,  —  to  express  himself.  ^ 

Few  writers  have  ever  treated  their  work 
more,  seriously,  or  studied  their  art  more 
industriously.  He  talked  sometimes,  to  be 
sure,  as  if  there  were  no  art  about  it.  To 
listen  to  him  in  such  a  mood,  one  might 


THOREAU  113 

suppose  that  the  fact  and  the  thought  were 
the  only  things  to  be  considered,  and  that 
language  followed  of  itself.  Such  was 
neither  his  belief  nor  his  practice.  But 
he  was  one  of  the  fortunate  ones  who  by 
taking  pains  can  produce  an  effect  of  easi- 
ness ;  who  can  recast  and  recast  a  sentence, 
and  in  the  end  leave  it  looking  as  if  it  had 
dropped  from  a  running  pen.  One  of  the 
fortunates,  we  say;  for  an  air  of  innocent 
unconsciousness  is  as  becoming  in  a  sen- 
tence as  in  a  face. 

On  this  point  a  useful  study  in  con- 
trasts might  be  made  between  Thoreau 
and  a  man  who  gladly  acknowledged  him 
as  one  of  his  masters.  "Upon  me,"  says 
Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  "this  pure,  nar- 
row, sunnily  ascetic  Thoreau  had  exer- 
cised a  great  charm.  I  have  scarce  written 
ten  sentences  since  I  was  introduced  to 
him,  but  his  influence  might  be  somewhere 
detected  by  a  close  observer."  The  ob- 
server would  need  to  be  very  close  indeed, 
the  majority  of  Stevensonians  will  think, 
but  that,  true  or  false,  is  nothing  to  the  pur- 
pose here.  Stevenson  and  Thoreau  both 
made  writing  a  lifelong  study,  and  with 


114  FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

exceedingly  diverse  results.  The  Scotch- 
man's style  is  the  finer,  but  then  it  is  some- 
times in  danger  of  becoming  superfine. 
We  may  not  wish  it  different.  Such  work 
must  be  as  it  is.  It  could  hardly  be  better 
without  being  worse,  the  writing  of  fine 
prose  being  always  a  question  of  compro- 
mises, a  gain  here  for  a  loss  there,  a  choice  of 
imperfections;  perfect  prose  being  in  fact 
impossible,  except  in  the  briefest  snatches. 
But  surely  Stevenson's  gift  was  not  an  ab- 
solute naturalness  and  transparency,  such 
as  lets  the  thought  show  through  on  the  in- 
stant, and  leaves  the  beauty  of  the  verbal 
medium  to  catch  the  attention  afterward,  if 
the  reader  will.  "  For  love  of  lovely  words," 
an  artist  of  Stevenson's  temperament,  how- 
ever sound  his  theories,  may  sometimes  find 
it  hard  to  make  a  righteous  choice  between 
the  music  of  an  exquisite  cadence  and  the 
pure  expressiveness  of  a  halting  phrase. 
The  author  of  "  Walden  "  had  his  literary 
temptations,  but  not  of  this  kind.  Let  the 
phrase  halt,  so  long  as  it  expressed  a  sturdy 
truth  in  sturdy  fashion.  As  for  that  homely 
quality  —  " careless  country  talk"  —  which 
Thoreau  prayed  for,  and  in  good  measure 


THOREAU  115 

received,  it  is  questionable  whether  Steven- 
son ever  sought  it,  though  he  would  no 
doubt  have  assented  to  Thoreau's  words: 
*' Homeliness  is  almost  as  great  a  merit  in 
a  book  as  in  a  house,  if  the  reader  would 
abide  there.  It  is  next  to  beauty,  and  a  very 
high  art."  ) 

Thoreau,  indeed,  first  as  a  spiritual  econ- 
omist, and  next  as  an  artist,  had  a  natural 
relish  for  the  common  and  the  plain.  Every 
landscape  that  was  dreary  enough,  as  he 
says  of  Cape  Cod,  had  a  certain  beauty  in 
his  eyes.  Whether  in  literature  or  in  life,  he 
preferred  the  beauty  that  is  inherent, — 
the  beauty  of  the  thing  itself.;  Ornament, 
beauty  laid  on,  did  not  much  attract  him. 
Among  persons,  it  was  the  wilder-seeming, 
the  less  tamed  and  cultivated,  with  whom 
he  liked  to  converse,  and  whose  sayings 
he  oftenest  recorded.  Though  they  might 
be  crabbed  specimens,  "run  all  to  thorn 
and  rind,  and  crowded  out  of  shape  by 
adverse  circumstances,  like  the  third  chest- 
nut in  the  burr,"  they  were  still  what 
nature  had  made  them.  Even  a  crowd 
pleased  him,  if  it  was  composed  of  the  right 
materials,  —  that  is  to  say,  if  it  was  rude 


lie         FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

enough.  Thus  he,  a  hermit,  took  pleasure 
in  the  autumnal  cattle-show.;  With  what 
a  touch  of  affection  he  lays  on  the  colors! 
"The  wind  goes  hurrying  clown  the  coun- 
try, gleaning  every  loose  straw  that  is  left 
in  the  fields,  while  every  farmer  lad,  too, 
appears  to  scud  before  it, — having  donned 
his  best  pea-jacket  and  pepper-and-salt 
waistcoat,  his  unbent  trousers,  outstanding 
rigging  of  duck,  or  kerseymere,  or  cordu- 
roy, and  his  furry  hat  withal,  —  to  coun- 
try fairs  and  cattle-shows,  to  that  Rome 
among  the  villages  where  the  treasures  of 
the  year  are  gathered.  All  the  land  over 
they  go  leaping  the  fences  with  their  tough, 
idle  palms,  which  have  never  learned  to 
hang  by  their  sides,  amid  the  low  of  calves 
and  the  bleating  of  sheep,  —  Amos,  Abner, 
Elnathan,  Elbridge,  — 

'From  steep  pine-bearing  mountains  to  the  plain.' 

I  love  these  sons  of  earth,  every  mother's 
son  of  them."  It  is  worth  while  to  see  the 
country's  people,  he  thinks,  and  even  the 
"supple  vagabond,"  who  is  "sure  to  ap- 
pear on  the  least  rumor  of  such  a  gather- 
ing, and  the  next  day  to  disappear,  and 


THOREAU  117 

go   into  his  hole  like  the  seventeen-year 
locust." 

For  the  average  (uninitiated)  reader,  be 
it  said,  there  is  nothing  better  in  Thoreau 
than  his  thumb-nail  sketches  of  humble, 
every-day  humanity;  as  there  is  no  part 
of  his  work,  not  even  his  denunciation  of 
worldly  conformity,  or  his  picturing  of 
nature's  moods,  which  is  done  with  more 
absolute  good-will.)  A  man  need  not  be 
an  idealist,  a  naturalist,  or  anything  else 
out  of  the  ordinary,  to  like  the  Canadian 
woodchopper,  for  example,  cousin  to  the 
pine  and  the  rock,  who  never  was  tired 
in  his  life,  and,  stranger  still,  sometimes 
acted  as  if  he  were  "thinking  for  himself 
and  expressing  his  own  opinions;"  or  the 
old  fisherman,  always  haunting  the  river 
in  serene  afternoons,  and  "almost  rustling 
with  the  sedge;"  or  the  Cape  Cod  wrecker, 
whose  face  was  "like  an  old  sail  endowed 
with  life,"  —  one  of  the  Pilgrims,  perhaps, 
who  had  "kept  on  the  back  side  of  the 
Cape  and  let  the  centuries  go  by;"  or  the 
free-spoken  Wellfleet  oysterman,  "a  poor 
good-for-nothing  crittur,"  now  "under  pet- 
ticoat government,"  who  yet  remembered 


118         FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

George  Washington  as  a  r-a-tber  large  and 
portly-looking  man,  with  a  pretty  good  leg 
as  he  sat  on  his  horse;"  or  the  iron-jawed 
Nauset  woman,  who  seemed  to  be  shouting 
at  you  through  a  breaker,  and  who  looked 
"as  if  it  made  her  head  ache  to  live;"  or 
the  country  soldier  boy  on  his  way  to  mus- 
ter, in  full  regimentals,  with  shouldered 
musket  and  military  step,  who  in  a  lonely 
place  in  the  woods  is  suddenly  abashed  at 
the  sight  of  a  stranger  approaching,  and 
finds  himself  hard  put  to  it  to  get  by  in 
anything  like  military  order. 
(  With  men  like  these,  natural  men, 
Thoreau  found  himself  at  home;  he  de- 
scribed them  almost  as  sympathetically  as 
if  they  had  been  so  many  woodchucks  or 
hen-hawks.^  As  he  said  of  his  own  boy- 
hood, they  were  "part  and  parcel  of  na- 
ture" itself.  As  for  fine  manners  parading 
about  in  fine  clothes,  how  should  he,  a  rus- 
tic jealous  of  his  rusticity,  presume  to  know 
what,  if  anything,  might  be  going  on  under 
all  that  broadcloth  ?'  Reality  was  the  chief 
of  his  ideals.  The  shabbiest  of  it  was  more 
to  the  purpose  than  a  masquerade,^ 

Whether  it  would  have  been  better  for 


THOREAU  119 

him  had  his  taste  been  more  Hberal  in 
this  respect  is  a  question  about  which  it 
might  be  useless  to  speculate.  Breadth 
may  easily  be  sought  at  too  great  an  ex- 
pense, especially  by  one  who  has  a  distinct 
and  highly  individual  work  to  accomplish. 
First  of  all,  such  a  man  must  be  himself. 
His  imperfections,  even,  must  be  of  his 
own  kind,  twin-born  with  his  better  quali- 
ties, a  certain  lack  of  complaisance  being 
one  of  the  likeliest  and,  in  the  strict  sense, 
most  appropriate.  But  that  some  of  Tho- 
reau's  private  and  hasty  remarks,  in  his 
letters  and  journals,  about  the  meanness 
of  his  fellow-creatures,  the  more  "  respecta- 
ble" among  them,  especially,  might  profit- 
ably have  been  left  unprinted,  is  less  open 
to  doubt.  They  were  expressions  of  moods 
rather  than  of  convictions,  it  is  fair  to 
assume,  and  in  any  event  would  never 
have  been  printed  by  their  author,  one 
of  whose  cravings  was  for  some  kind  of 
india-rubber  that  would  rub  out  at  once 
all  which  it  cost  him  so  many  perusals 
and  so  much  reluctance  to  erase.  )  It  is 
pretty  hard  justice  that  holds  a  man  pub- 
licly to  everything  he  scribbles  in  private. 


120         FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

—  as  if  no  allowance  were  to  be  made 
for  whim  and  the  provocation  of  the  mo- 
ment. The  charm  of  a  journal,  as  Thoreau 
says,  consists  in  a  "certain  greenness." 
It  is  "a  record  of  experiences  and  growth, 
not  a  preserve  of  things  well  done  or  said."| 
After  which  it  may  be  confessed  that  even 
from  "Walden"  and  the  "Week,"  pub- 
lished in  the  author's  lifetime,  it  is  possible 
to  discover  that  charity  and  sweetness  were 
not  among  his  most  distinguishing  charac- 
teristics. Taste  him  after  Gilbert  White, 
and  contrast  the  mellowness  of  the  one  with 
the  sharp,  assertive,  acidulous  quality  of  the 
other.  Thoreau  was  a  wild  apple,  and 
would  have  been  proud  of  the  name,  sug- 
gestive of  that  "tang  and  smack"  which 
he  so  feelingly  celebrated.  "Nonesuches" 
and  "seek-no-furthers"  were  very  tame 
and  forgettable,  he  thought,  as  compared 
with  the  wildings,  even  the  acrid  and  the 
puckery  among  which  he  begrudged  to 
the  cider-mill.  It  is  in  part  this  very  "tang 
and  smack,"  we  may  be  sure,  that  makes 
his  books  keep  so  well  in  Time's  literary 
cellar. 
/'His    humor,  especially,    "indispensable 


THOREAU  121 

pledge  of  sanity,"  as  he  calls  it,  is  of  that 
best  of  fruity  flavors,  a  pleasant  sour.^ 
Some,  indeed,  emulating  his  own  fertility 
in  paradox,  have  maintained  that  he  had 
no  humor,  while  others  have  rebuked  him 
for  priggishly  excluding  it  from  his  later 
work.  Did  such  critics  never  read  "  Cape 
Cod  "  ?  There,  surely,  Thoreau  gave  his 
natural  drollery  full  play,  —  an  almost 
antinomian  liberty,  to  take  a  w^ord  out  of 
those  ecclesiastical  histories,  with  the  read- 
ing of  which,  under  his  umbrella,  he  so 
patiently  enlivened  his  sandy  march  from 
Orleans  to  Provincetown.  "As  I  sat  on  a 
hill  one  sultiy  Sunday  afternoon,"  he  says, 
"the  meeting-house  windows  being  open, 
my  meditations  w^ere  interrupted  by  the 
noise  of  a  preacher  who  shouted  like  a 
boatswain,  profaning  the  quiet  atmosphere, 
and  who,  I  fancied,  must  have  taken  off 
his  coat.  Few  things  could  have  been 
more  disgusting  or  disheartening.  I  wished 
the  tithing-man  would  stop  him."  Charles 
Lamb  himself  could  hardly  have  bettered 
the  delicious,  biting  absurdity  of  that  final 
touch.  It  was  not  this  Boanergian  minis- 
ter, but  a  man  of  an  earlier  generation,  of 


122         FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

whom  we  are  told  that  he  wrote  a  "  Body 
of  Divinity,"  "  a  book  frequently  sneered 
at,  particularly  by  those  who  have  read  it." 

The  whole  Cape,  past  and  present,  was 
looked  at  half  quizzically  by  its  inland 
visitor.  The  very  houses  "seemed,  like 
mariners  ashore,  to  have  sat  right  down 
to  enjoy  the  firmness  of  the  land,  without 
studying  their  postures  or  habiliments,"  — 
a  description  not  to  be  fully  appreciated 
except  by  those  who  have  seen  a  Cape  Cod 
village,  with  its  buildings  dropped  here  and 
there  at  haphazard  upon  the  sand.  Here, 
as  everywhere,  he  was  hungry  for  particu- 
lars; now  improvising  a  rude  quadrant 
with  which  to  calculate  the  height  of  the 
bank  at  Highland  Light,  now,  by  ingen- 
ious but  "not  impertinent"  questions,  and 
for  his  private  satisfaction  only,  getting  at 
the  contents  of  a  schoolboy's  dinner-pail, 
—  the  homeliest  facts  being  always  "the 
most  acceptable  to  an  inquiring  mind." 
(^  Thoreau's  mother,  by-the-bye,  had  some 
reputation  as  a  gossip. 

His  work,  humorous  or  serious,  tran- 
scendental or  matter-of-fact,  is  all  the 
fruit  of  his  own  tree.   Whatever  its  theme, 


THOREAU  123 

nature  or  man,  it  is  all  of  one  spirit.  Think 
what  you  will  of  it,  it  is  never  insipid.  As 
his  friend  Channing  said,  it  has  its  "stoical 
merits,"  its  "uncomfortableness."  Well 
might  its  author  express  his  sympathy  with 
the  barberry  bush,  whose  business  is  to 
ripen  its  fruit,  not  to  sweeten  it,  —  and 
to  protect  it  with  thorns.  "  Seek  the  lotus, 
a,nd  take  a  draught  of  rapture,"  was  Mar- 
garet Fuller's  rather  high-flown  advice  to 
him;  yet  she  too  perceived  that  his  mind 
was  *'not  a  soil  for  the  citron  and  the  rose, 
but  for  the  whortleberry,  the  pine,  or  the 
heather."  In  all  his  books  it  would  be  next 
to  impossible  to  find  a  pretty  phrase  or  a 
sentimental  one.  He  resorted  to  nature  — 
in  his  less  inquisitive  hours — for  the  mood 
into  which  it  put  him,  the  invigoration,  the 
serenity,  the  mental  activity  it  communi- 
cated. But  his  pleasure  in  it,  as  compared 
with  Wordsworth's  or  Hazlitt's,  to  take 
very  dissimilar  examples,  was  mostly  an 
intellectual  affair,  the  reader  is  tempted  to 
say,  though  the  remark  needs  qualification. 
One  remembers  such  a  passage  as  that 
descriptive  of  a  winter  twilight  in  Yellow 
Birch  Swamp,  where  the  gleams  of  the 


124         FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

birches,  as  he  came  to  one  after  another 
of  them,  "each  time  made  his  heart  beat 
faster."  Yet  even  here  we  are  told  of  his 
ecstasy  rather  than  made  to  feel  it;  and 
in  general,  surely,  though  he  valued  his 
emotions,  and  went  to  the  woods  and 
fields  to  enjoy  them,  they  were  such  emo- 
tions as  belonged  to  a  pretty  stoical  sort 
of  Epicurean;,  less  rapturous  than  Words- 
worth's, less  tender  than  Hazlitt's,  and 
with  no  trace  of  the  brooding  melancholy 
which  makes  the  charm  of  books  like  Ober- 
mann  and  the  journal  of  Amiel.  He  de- 
lighted in  artless  country  music  (it  does 
not  appear  that  he  ever  heard  any  other, 
and  of  course  he  felicitated  himself  upon 
this  as  upon  all  the  rest  of  his  poverty; 
it  was  only  the  depraved  ear,  he  thought, 
that  needed  the  opera),  but  let  any  reader 
try  to  imagine  him  writing  this  bit  out  of 
one  of  Hazlitt's  essays: — 

"I  remember  once  strolling  along  the 
margin  of  a  stream,  skirted  with  willows 
and  plashy  sedges,  in  one  of  those  low, 
sheltered  valleys  on  Salisbury  Plain,  where 
the  monks  of  former  ages  had  planted 
chapels  and  built  hermits'  cells.     There 


THOREAU  125 

was  a  little  parish  church  near,  but  tall 
elms  and  quivering  alders  hid  it  from  sight, 
when,  all  of  a  sudden,  I  was  startled  by 
the  sound  of  the  full  organ  pealing  on  the 
ear,  accompanied  by  rustic  voices  and 
the  willing  quire  of  village  maids  and  chil- 
dren. It  rose,  indeed,  '  like  an  exlialation 
of  rich  distilled  perfumes.'  The  dew  from 
a  thousand  pastures  was  gathered  in  its 
softness;  the  silence  of  a  thousand  years 
spoke  in  it.  It  came  upon  the  heart  like 
the  calm  beauty  of  death;  fancy  caught 
the  sound,  and  faith  mounted  on  it  to  the 
skies.  It  filled  the  valley  like  a  mist,  and 
still  poured  out  its  endless  chant,  and 
still  it  swells  upon  the  ear,  and  wraps  me 
in  a  golden  trance,  drowning  the  noisy 
tumult  of  the  world!" 

Here  is  another  spirit  than  Thoreau's, 
another  voice,  another  kind  of  prose  — 
(''  prose  with  the  throb  and  even  the  accent 
of  poetry.  Stoics  and  spiritual  economists 
do  not  write  in  this  strain,  nor  is  this  the 
manner  of  a  too  envious  observer  of  par- 
ticulars. For  better  or  worse,  the  prose 
of  our  poet-naturalist  went  squarely  on 
its  feet.  His  fancy  might  be  never  so  nimble ; 


126         FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

conceit  and  paradox  might  fairly  make  a 
cloud  about  him;  but  he  essayed  no  flights. 
If  his  heart  beat  faster  at  some  beauty  of 
sight  or  sound,  he  said  so  quietly,  with  no 
change  of  voice,  and  passed  on.  As  far 
as  the  mere  writing  went,  it  was  done  in 
straightforward,  honest  fashion,  as  if  a 
man  rather  than  an  author  held  the  pen. 

Thoreau  believed  in  well-packed  sen- 
tences, each  carrying  its  own  weight,  ex- 
pressive of  its  own  thought,  rememberable 
and  quotable.  Of  the  beauties  of  a  flowing 
style  he  had  heard  something  too  much. 
In  practice,  nevertheless,  whether  through 
design  or  by  some  natural  felicity,  he  steered 
a  middle  course.  The  sentences  might  be 
complete  in  themselves,  detachable,  able 
to  stand  alone,  but  the  paragraph  never 
lacked  a  logical  and  even  a  formal  cohe- 
sion. It  was  not  a  collection  of  "infinitely 
repellent  particles,"  nor  even  a  "basket  of 
nuts."  A  great  share  of  the  writer's  art, 
as  he  taught  it,  lay  in  leaving  out  the  un- 
essential, —  the  getting  in  of  the  essential 
having  first  been  taken  for  granted.  As 
for  readers,  in  his  more  exalted  moods  he 
wished  to  write  so  well  that  there  would  be 


THOREAU  127 

few  to  appreciate  him;  sometimes,  indeed, 
he  seemed  to  desire  no  readers  at  all.  He 
speaks  with  stern  disapproval  of  such  as 
trouble  themselves  upon  that  point,  and 
"would  fain  have  one  reader  before  they 
die."   A  lamentable  weakness,  truly. 

In  his  present  estate,  however,  let  us 
hope  that  he  carries  himself  a  shade  less 
haughtily,  and  is  not  above  an  innocent 
pleasure  in  the  spread  of  his  earthly  fame, 
in  new  readers  and  new  editions,  and  such 
choicely  limited  popularity  as  befits  a 
classic.  .'Even  in  his  lifetime,  as  Emerson 
tells  the  story,  he  once  tried  to  believe  that 
something  in  his  lecture  might  interest  a 
little  girl  who  told  him  she  was  going  to 
hear  it  if  it  wasn't  to  be  one  of  those  old 
philosophical  things  that  she  did  n't  care 
about;  and  this  although  he  had  just  been 
maintaining,  characteristically,  that  what- 
ever succeeded  with  an  audience  must  be 
bad.  He  speaks  somewhere  against  luxu- 
rious books,  with  superfluous  paper  and 
marginal  embellishments.  ^  His  taste  was 
Spartan  in  those  days.  But  he  was  never 
a  stickler  for  consistency,  and  we  may 
indulge  a  comfortable  assurance  that  he 


128         FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

takes  no  offense  now  at  the  sight  of  his 
Cape  Cod  journey  —  in  which  he  worked 
so  hard  on  that  soft,  leg-tiring  Back-Side 
beach  to  get  the  ocean  into  him  —  decked 
out  in  colors  and  set  forth  sumptuously 
in  two  volumes.  It  is  a  very  modest  author 
who  fears  that  his  text  will  be  outshone 
by  any  pictures,  no  matter  how  splendid. 
But  who  would  have  thought  it,  fifty  years 
ago,  —  a  book  by  the  hermit  of  Walden 
in  an  edition  de  luxe,  to  lie  on  parlor  tables !  j 
If  only  his  father  and  his  brother  John 
could  have  seen  it! 

Thoreau  believed  in  himself  and  in  the 
soundness  of  his  work.  He  coveted  readers, 
and  believed  that  he  should  have  them. 
Without  question  he  wrote  for  the  future, 
and  foresaw  himself  safe  from  oblivion.  . 
Emerson  regretted  Henry's  want  of  am- 
bition, we  are  told.  He  might  have  spared 
himself.  "Show  me  a  man  who  consults 
his  genius,"  said  Thoreau,  "and  you  have 
shown  me  a  man  who  cannot  be  advised." 
And  he  was  the  man.  He  was  following 
an  ambition  of  his  own.  If  he  did  not  keep 
step  with  his  companions,  it  was  because 
he   "heard    a    different    drummer."     His 


THOREAU  129 

ambition,  and  what  seemed  his  wayward 
singularity,  have  been  justified  by  the 
event.  His  "strange,  self-centred,  solitary 
figure,  unique  in  the  annals  of  literature," 
is  in  no  danger  of  being  forgotten.  But 
what  is  most  cheering  about  his  present 
increasing  vogue,  especially  in  England, 
is  that  it  arises  from  the  very  quality  that 
Thoreau  himself  most  prized,  the  inner- 
most thing  in  him,  —r-  the  loftiness  and 
purity  of  his  thought.  Simplicity,  faith, 
devotion  to  the  essential  and  the  perma- 
nent, —  these  were  never  more  needed 
than  now.  These  he  taught,  and,  by  a 
happy  fate,  he  linked  them  with  those 
natural  themes  that  change  not  with  time, 
and  so  can  never  become  obsolete. 


THOREAU'S    DEMAND    UPON 
NATURE 


THOREAU'S    DEMAND    UPON 
NATURE 

"I  WISH  to  speak  a  word  for  Nature,  for 
absolute  freedom  and  wildness."  So  Tho- 
reau  began  an  article  in  "The  Atlantic 
Monthly  "  forty -four  years  ago^  He  wished 
to  make  an  extreme  statement,  he  de- 
clared, in  hope  of  making  an  emphatic  one. 
Like  idealists  in  general,  — ^^  like  Jesus  in 
particular,  —  he  believed  in  omitting  quali- 
fications and  exceptions.  Those  were  mat- 
ters certain  to  be  sufficiently  insisted  upon 
by  the  orthodox  and  the  conservative,  the 
minister  and  the  school  committee. 

In  an  attempt  at  an  extreme  statement, 
Thoreau  was  very  unlikely  to  fail.  Thanks 
to  an  inherited  aptitude  and  years  of  prac- 
tice, there  have  been  few  to  excel  him  with 
the  high  lights.  In  his  hands  exaggeration 
becomes  one  of  the  fine  arts.  We  will  not 
call  it  the  finest  art;  his  own  best  work 
would  teach  us  better  than  that;  but  such 
as  it  is,  with  him  to  hold  the  brush,  it  would 


134         FRIENDS    ON   THE   SHELF 

be  difficult  to  imagine  anything  more  effec- 
tive. When  he  praises  a  quaking  swamp 
as  the  most  desirable  of  dooryards,  or 
has  visions  of  a  people  so  enlightened  as 
to  burn  all  their  fences  and  leave  all  the 
forests  to  grow,  who  shall  contend  with 
him  ?  And  yet  the  sympathetic  reader  — 
the  only  reader  —  knows  what  is  meant, 
and  what  is  not  meant,  and  finds  it  good; 
as  he  finds  it  good  when  he  is  bidden  to 
resist  not  a  thief,  or  to  hate  his  father  and 
mother. 

Thoreau's  love  for  the  wild — not  to  be 
confounded  with  a  liking  for  natural  his- 
tory or  an  appreciation  of  scenery  —  was 
as  natural  and  unaffected  as  a  child's  love 
of  sweets.  It  belonged  to  no  one  part  of 
his  life.  It  finds  utterance  in  all  his  books, 
but  is  best  expressed,  most  feelingly  and 
simply,  and  therefore  most  convincingly, 
in  his  journal,  especially  in  such  an  entry 
as  that  of  January  7,  1857,  a  bitterly  cold, 
windy  day,  with  snow  blowing,  7—  one  of 
the  days  when  "all  animate  things  are  re- 
duced to  their  lowest  terms."  Thoreau 
has  been  out,  nevertheless,  for  his  after- 
noon walk,   "through  the  woods  toward 


THOREAU'S   DEMAND   ON   NATURE    135 

the  cliffs  along  the  side  of  the  Well  Mea- 
dow field."  Contact  with  Nature,  even  in 
this  her  severest  mood,  has  given  a  quick- 
ening yet  restraining  grace  to  his  pen. 
Now,  there  is  no  question  of  "emphasis," 
no  plotting  for  an  "extreme  statement," 
no  thought  of  dull  readers,  for  whom  the 
truth  must  be  shown  large,  as  it  were,  by 
some  magic-lantern  process.  How  differ- 
ently he  speaks !  "  Might  I  aspire  to  praise 
the  moderate  nymph  Nature,"  he  says,  "I 
must  be  like  her,  moderate." 

The  passage  is  too  long  for  quotation 
in  full.  "There  is  nothing  so  sanative, 
so  poetic,"  he  writes,  *'as  a  walk  in  the 
woods  and  fields  even  now,  when  I  meet 
none  abroad  for  pleasure.  Nothing  so 
inspires  me,  and  excites  such  serene  and 
profitable  thought.  .  .  .  Alone  in  distant 
woods  or  fields,  in  unpretending  sprout- 
lands  or  pastures  tracked  by  rabbits,  even 
in  a  bleak  and,  to  most,  cheerless  day 
like  this,  when  a  villager  would  be  think- 
ing of  his  inn,  I  come  to  myself,  I  once 
more  feel  myself  grandly  related.  This 
cold  and  solitude  are  friends  of  mine.  .  .  . 
I  get  away  a  mile  or  two  from  the  town, 


136         FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

into  the  stillness  and  solitude  of  nature, 
with  rocks,  trees,  weeds,  snow  about  me. 
I  enter  some  glade  in  the  woods,  perchance, 
where  a  few  weeds  and  dry  leaves  alone 
lift  themselves  above  the  surface  of  the 
snow,  and  it  is  as  if  I  had  come  to  an  open 
window.  I  see  out  and  around  myself.  .  .  . 
This  stillness,  solitude,  wildness  of  nature 
is  a  kind  of  thoroughwort  or  boneset  to 
my  intellect.  This  is  what  I  go  out  to  seek. 
It  is  as  if  I  always  met  in  those  places  some 
grand,  serene,  immortal,  infinitely  encour- 
aging, though  invisible  companion,  and 
walked  with  him." 

Four  days  later,  dwelling  still  upon  his 
"success  in  solitary  and  distant  woodland 
walking  outside  the  town,"  he  says:  "I  do 
not  go  there  to  get  my  dinner,  but  to  get 
that  sustenance  which  dinners  only  pre- 
serve me  to  enjoy,  without  which  dinners 
are  a  vain  repetition.  ...  I  never  chanced 
to  meet  with  any  man  so  cheering  and 
elevating  and  encouraging,  so  infinitely 
suggestive,  as  the  stillness  and  solitude  of 
the  Well  Meadow  field." 

Language  like  this,  though  all  may  per- 
ceive  the   beauty   and   feel   the   sincerity 


THOREAU'S   DEMAND   ON   NATURE     137 

of  it,  is  to  be  understood  only  by  those 
who  are  of  the  speaker's  kin.  It  describes 
a  country  which  no  man  knows  unless  he 
has  been  there.  It  expresses  life,  not  the- 
ory, and  calls  for  life  on  the  part  of  the 
hearer. 

And  if  the  appeal  be  made  to  this  tri- 
bunal, the  language  used  here  and  so  often 
elsewhere,  by  Thoreau,  touching  the  rela- 
tive inferiority  of  human  society  will  neither 
give  offense  nor  seem  in  any  wise  extrava- 
gant or  morbid.  Thoreau  knew  Emerson; 
he  had  lived  in  the  same  house  with  him; 
but  even  Emerson's  companionship  was 
less  stimulating  to  him  than  Nature's  own. 
Well,  and  how  is  it  with  ourselves,  who 
have  the  best  of  Emerson  in  his  books  .^ 
Much  as  these  may  have  done  for  us,  have 
we  never  had  seasons  of  communion  with 
the  life  of  the  universe  itself  when  even 
Emerson's  words  would  have  seemed  an 
intrusion  ?  Is  not  the  voice  of  the  world, 
when  we  can  hear  it,  better  than  the  voice 
of  any  man  interpreting  the  world  ?  Is  it 
not  better  to  hear  for  ourselves  than  to  be 
told  what  another  has  heard  .^  When  the 
forest  speaks  things  ineffable,  and  the  soul 


138         FRIENDS   ON   THE   SHELF 

hears  what  even  to  itself  it  can  never  utter, 

—  for  such  an  hour  there  is  no  book,  there 
never  will  be.  And  if  we  wish  not  a  book, 
no  more  do  we  wish  the  author  of  a  book. 
We  are  in  better  company.   In  such  hours, 

—  too  few,  alas!  —  though  we  be  the  plain- 
est of  plain  people,  our  own  emotions 
are  of  more  value  than  any  talk.  We  know, 
in  our  measure,  what  Thoreau  — 

"An  early  unconverted  Saint"  — 

was  seeking  words  for  when  he  said,  "I 
feel  my  Maker  blessing  me." 

To  him,  as  to  many  another  man,  vis- 
itations of  this  kind  came  oftenest  in  wild 
and  solitary  places.  Small  wonder,  then, 
that  he  loved  to  go  thither.  Small  wonder 
that  he  found  the  pleasures  of  society  un- 
satisfying in  the  comparison.  There  he 
communed,  not  with  himself  nor  with  his 
fellow,  but  with  the  "Wisdom  and  Spirit 
of  the  Universe."  And  when  it  is  objected 
that  this  ought  not  to  have  been  true, 
that  he  ought  to  have  found  the  presence 
of  men  more  elevating  and  stimulating 
than  the  presence  of  "inanimate"  nature, 
we  must  take  the  liberty  to  believe   that 


THOREAU'S   DEMAND   ON   NATURE     139 

the  critic  speaks  of  that  whereof  he  knows 
nothing.  To  revert  to  our  own  figure,  he 
has  never  lived  in  Thoreau's  country. 

Thoreau  was  wedded  to  Nature  not 
so  much  for  her  beauty  as  for  delight  in 
her  high  companionableness.  There  was 
more  of  Wordsworth  than  of  Keats  or 
Rnskin  in  him.  He  was  more  philosopher 
than  poet,  perhaps  we  may  say.  He  loved 
spirit  rather  than  form  and  color,  though 
for  these  also  his  eye  was  better  than  most. 
Being  a  stoic,  a  born  economist,  a  child 
of  the  pinched  and  frozen  North,  he  felt 
most  at  home  with  Nature  in  her  dull 
seasons.  His  delight  in  a  wintry  day 
was  typical.  He  loved  his  mistress  best 
when  she  was  most  like  himself;  as  he 
said  of  human  friendships,  "I  love  that 
one  with  whom  I  sympathize,  be  she 
'beautiful'  or  otherwise,  of  excellent  mind 
or  not."  The  swamp,  the  desert,  the  wil- 
derness, these  he  especially  celebrated. 
He  began  by  thinking  that  nothing  could 
be  too  wild  for  him;  and  even  in  his 
later  years,  notably  in  the  "Atlantic"  essay 
above  quoted,  he  sometimes  blew  the  same 
heroic  strain.    By  this  time,  however,  he 


140         FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

knew  and  confessed,  to  himself  at  least, 
that  there  was  another  side  to  the  story; 
that  there  was  a  dreariness  beyond  even 
his  ready  appreciation.  More  than  once 
we  find  in  his  diary  expressions  like  this, 
in  late  November:  "Now  a  man  will  eat 
his  heart,  if  ever,  now  while  the  earth  is 
bare,  barren,  and  cheerless,  and  we  have 
the  coldness  of  winter  without  the  variety 
of  ice  and  snow." 

And  what  was  true  of  seasons  was,  in 
the  long  run,  equally  true  of  places.  Let 
them  be  wild,  by  all  means,  yet  not  too 
wild.  When  he  returned  from  the  Maine 
woods,  he  had  seen,  for  the  time  being, 
enough  of  the  wilderness.  It  was  a  relief 
to  get  back  to  the  smooth  but  still  varied 
landscape  of  eastern  Massachusetts.  That, 
for  a  permanent  residence,  seemed  to  him 
incomparably  better  than  an  unbroken 
forest.  The  poet  must  live  open  to  the  sky 
and  the  wind;  his  road  must  be  prepared 
for  him;  and  yet,  *'not  only  for  strength, 
but  for  beauty,  the  poet  must,  from  time 
to  time,  travel  the  logger's  path  and  the 
Indian's  trail,  to  drink  at  some  new  and 
more  bracing  fountain  of  the  Muses."    In 


THOREAU'S   DEMAND   ON   NATURE     141 

short,  the  poet  should  live  in  Concord, 
and  only  once  in  a  while  seek  the  inspira- 
tions of  the  outer  wilderness. 

What  we  have  called  Thoreau's  stoi- 
cism (knowing  very  well  that  he  was  not 
a  stoic,  except  in  some  partial,  looser 
meaning  of  the  word),  his  liking  for  plain- 
ness and  low  expense,  is  perhaps  at  the 
base  of  one  of  his  rarest  excellencies  as 
a  writer  upon  nature,  —  his  reserve  and 
moderation.  In  statement,  it  is  true,  he 
could  extra vagate  like  a  master.  He  boasts, 
as  well  he  may,  of  his  prowess  in  that  di- 
rection; but  in  tone  and  sentiment,  when 
it  came  to  dealing,  not  with  ethics  or 
philosophy,  but  with  the  mistress  of  his 
affections,  he  kept  always  decently  within 
bounds.  He  had  a  very  sprightly  fancy, 
when  he  chose  to  give  it  play;  but  he  had 
with  it,  and  controlling  it,  a  prevailing 
sobriety,  the  tempering  grace  of  good 
sense.  "The  alder,"  he  says,  "is  one  of 
the  prettiest  trees  and  shrubs  in  the  win- 
ter. It  is  evidently  so  full  of  life,  with  its 
conspicuously  pretty  red  catkins  dangling 
from  it  on  all  sides.  It  seems  to  dread  the 
winter  less   than  other   plants.  It   has   a 


142         FRIENDS   ON   THE   SHELF 

certain  heyday  and  cheery  look,  less  stiff 
than  most,  with  more  of  the  flexible  grace 
of  summer.  With  those  dangling  clusters 
of  red  catkins  which  it  switches  in  the 
face  of  winter,  it  brags  for  all  vegetation. 
It  is  not  daunted  by  the  cold,  but  still 
hangs  gracefully  over  the  frozen  stream." 
Most  admirable,  thrown  in  thus  by  the 
way,  amid  unaffected,  matter-of-fact  de- 
scription and  every-day  sense,  and  with 
its  homely  "brags"  and  "switches"  to 
hold  it  true,  —  to  save  it  from  a  touch  of 
foppery,  a  shade  too  much  of  prettiness. 
How  differently  some  writers  have  dealt 
with  similar  themes :  men  so  afraid  of  the 
commonplace  as  to  be  incapable  of  saying 
a  thing  in  so  many  words,  though  it  were 
only  to  mention  the  day  of  the  week;  men 
whose  every  other  sentence  must  contain 
a  "felicity;"  whose  pages  are  as  full  of 
floweriness  and  dainty  conceits  as  a  milli- 
ner's window;  who  surfeit  you  with  con- 
fections, till  you  think  of  bread  and  water 
as  a  feast.  Whether  Thoreau's  temper- 
ance is  to  be  credited  to  the  restraints  of 
stoical  philosophy  or  to  plain  good  taste, 
it  is  a  virtue  to  be  thankful  for. 


THOREAU'S   DEMAND   ON   NATURE     143 

With  him  the  study  of  nature  was  not 
an  amusement,  nor  even  a  more  or  less 
serious  occupation  for  leisure  hours,  but 
the  work  of  his  life;  a  work  to  which 
he  gave  himself  from  year's  end  to  year's 
end,  as  faithfully  and  laboriously,  and 
with  as  definite  a  purpose,  —  a  crop  as 
truly  in  his  eye,  —  as  any  Concord  farmer 
gave  himself  to  his  farm.  He  was  no  ama- 
teur, no  dilettante,  no  conscious  hobbyist, 
laughing  between  times  at  his  own  ab- 
sorption. His  sense  of  a  mission  was  as 
unquestioning  as  Wordsworth's,  though 
happily  there  went  with  it  a  sense  of  humor 
that  preserved  it  in  good  measure  from 
over-emphasis  and  damaging  iteration. 

In  degree,  if  not  in  kind,  this  whole- 
hearted, lifelong  devotion  was  something 
new.  It  was  one  of  Thoreau's  originali- 
ties. To  what  a  pitch  he  carried  it,  how 
serious  and  all-controlling  it  was,  the  pages 
of  his  journal  bear  continual  witness.  His 
was  a  Puritan  conscience.  He  could  never 
do  his  work  well  enough.  After  a  eulogy 
of  winter  buds,  "impregnable,  vivacious 
willow  catkins,  but  half  asleep  along  the 
twigs"  (there,  again,  is  fancy  of  an  uncloy- 


144         FRIENDS    ON   THE   SHELF 

ing  type),  lie  breaks  out:  "How  healthy 
and  vivacious  must  he  be  who  would  treat 
of  these  things.  You  must  love  the  crust 
of  the  earth  on  which  you  dwell  more 
than  the  sweet  crust  of  any  bread  or  cake; 
you  must  be  able  to  extract  nutriment  out 
of  a  sand  heap."  "Must"  was  a  great 
word  with  Thoreau.  In  hard  times,  espe- 
cially, he  braced  himself  with  it.  "The 
winter,  cold  and  bound  out  as  it  is,  is 
thrown  to  us  like  a  bone  to  a  famishing 
dog,  and  we  are  expected  to  get  the  mar- 
row out  of  it.  While  the  milkmen  in  the 
outskirts  are  milking  so  many  scores  of 
cows  before  sunrise,  these  winter  morn- 
ings, it  is  our  task  to  milk  the  winter  it- 
self. It  is  true  it  is  like  a  cow  that  is 
dry,  and  our  fingers  are  numb,  and  there 
is  none  to  wake  us  up.  .  .  .  But  the  win- 
ter was  not  given  us  for  no  purpose.  We 
must  thaw  its  cold  with  our  genialness. 
We  are  tasked  to  find  out  and  appropriate 
all  the  nutriment  it  yields.  If  it  is  a  cold 
and  hard  season,  its  fruit  no  doubt  is  the 
more  concentrated  and  nutty." 

In  these    winter  journalizings,  we    not 
only  have  example  and  proof  of  the  ear- 


THOREAU'S   DEMAND   ON   NATURE     145 

nestness  with  which  Thoreau  pursued 
his  outdoor  studies,  but  are  shown  their 
method  and  their  sufficient  object.  He 
was  to  be  a  writer,  and  nature  was  to  be 
his  theme,  or,  more  exactly,  his  medium 
of  expression.  He  required,  therefore,  in 
the  way  of  raw  material,  a  considerable 
store  of  outward  knowledge,  —  knowledge 
of  the  outside  or  aspect  of  things,  —  classi- 
fied, for  convenience,  as  botany,  ornitho- 
logy, entomology,  and  the  like;  but  after 
this,  and  infinitely  more  than  this,  he 
needed  a  living,  deepening  intimacy  with 
the  life  of  the  world  itself.  For  observa- 
tion of  the  ways  of  plants  and  animals,  of 
the  phases  of  earth  and  sky,  he  had  end- 
less patience  and  all  necessary  sharpness 
of  sense ;  work  of  this  kind  was  easy,  — 
he  could  do  it  in  some  good  degree  to  his 
satisfaction;  the  vexatious  thing  about  it 
was  that  it  readily  became  too  absorbing; 
but  his  real  work,  his  hard  work,  the  work 
that  was  peculiarly  his,  that  taxed  his 
capacities  to  the  full,  and  even  so  was 
never  accomplished,  this  work  was  not  an 
amassing  of  relative  knowledge,  an  accu- 
mulation of  facts,  a  familiarizing  of  him- 


146         FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

self  with  appearances,  but  a  perfecting 
of  sympathy,  the  organ  or  means  of  that 
absohite  knowledge  which  alone  he  found 
indispensable,  which  alone  he  cared  greatly 
to  communicate.  There,  except  at  rare 
moments,  he  was  to  the  last  below  his 
ideal.  His  "task"  was  never  done.  His 
union  with  nature  was  never  complete. 

The  measure  of  this  union  was  gauged, 
as  we  have  seen  already,  by  its  spiritual 
and  emotional  effects,  by  the  mental  states 
it  brought  him  into;  as  the  religious  mystic 
measures  the  success  of  his  prayers.  He 
walked  in  the  old  Carlisle  road,  as  the 
saint  goes  to  his  knees,  to  "put  off  worldly 
thoughts."  The  words  are  his  own.  There, 
when  the  hour  favored  him,  he  "sauntered 
near  to  heaven's  gate." 

It  must  be  only  too  evident  that  success 
of  this  transcendental  quality  is  not  to 
be  counted  upon  as  one  counts  upon  find- 
ing specimens  for  a  botanical  box.  There 
is  no  comparison  between  scientific  pur- 
suits, so  called,  and  this  kind  of  super- 
natural history.  For  this,  as  Thoreau  says, 
"you  must  be  in  a  different  state  from 
common."    "If  it  were  required  to  know 


THOREAU'S   DEMAND   ON   NATURE     147 

the  position  of  the  fruit  dots  or  the  charac- 
ter of  the  indusiiim,  nothing  could  be  easier 
than  to  ascertain  it;  but  if  it  is  required 
that  you  be  affected  by  ferns,  that  they 
amount  to  anything,  signify  anything,  to 
you,  that  they  be  another  sacred  scrip- 
ture and  revelation  to  you,  helping  to  re- 
deem your  life,  this  end  is  not  so  easily 
accomplished." 

This,  then,  it  was  for  which  Thoreau 
was  ever  on  the  alert;  this  was  the  prize 
set  before  him;  this  he  required  of  ferns 
and  clouds,  of  birds  and  swamps  and  de- 
serted roads,  —  that  they  should  stir  him 
inwardly,  that  they  should  do  something 
to  redeem  his  life,  or,  as  he  said  elsewhere, 
to  affect  the  quality  of  the  day.  For  this 
he  cultivated  the  "fellowship  of  the  sea- 
sons," a  fellowship  on  which  no  man  ever 
made  larger  drafts.  Even  when  nature 
seemed  to  be  getting  "thumbed  like  an 
old  spelling-book,"  even  in  the  month 
that  tempted  him  sometimes  to  "eat  his 
heart,"  he  still  "sat  the  bench  with  perfect 
contentment,  unwilling  to  exchange  the 
familiar  vision  that  was  to  be  unrolled  for 
any  treasure  or  heaven  that  could  be  ima- 


148         FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

gined."  A  new  November  was  a  novelty 
more  tempting  than  any  voyage  to  Europe 
or  even  to  another  world.  "Young  men 
have  not  learned  the  phases  of  nature:" 
so  he  comforted  himself,  when  the  fervors 
and  inspirations  of  youth  seemed  at  times 
to  be  waning:  "I  would  know  when  in  the 
year  to  expect  certain  thoughts  and  moods, 
as  the  sportsman  knows  when  to  look  for 
plover." 

Here,  as  everywhere  with  Thoreau,  na- 
ture, in  his  ultimate  conception  of  it,  was 
nothing  of  itself.  Everything  is  for  man. 
This  belief  underlies  all  his  writing  upon 
natural  themes,  and,  as  well,  all  his  per- 
sonal dealings  with  the  natural  world.  His 
idlest  wanderings,  whether  in  the  Maine 
forests  or  in  Well  Meadow  field,  were  made 
serious  by  it.  To  judge  him  by  his  own 
testimony,  he  seems  to  have  known  com- 
paratively little  of  a  careless,  purposeless, 
childish  delight  in  nature  for  its  own  sake. 
Nature  was  a  better  kind  of  book;  and 
books  were  for  improvement.  In  this  re- 
spect he  was  sophisticated  from  his  youth, 
like  some  model  of  "early  piety."  Nature 
was  not  his  playground,  but  his  study,  his 


THOREAU'S   DEMAND   ON   NATURE     149 

Bible,  his  closet,  his  means  of  grace.  As 
we  have  said,  and  as  Channing  long  ago 
implied,  his  was  a  Puritan  conscience.  He 
must  get  at  the  heart  of  things,  sparing 
no  pains  nor  time,  holding  through  thick 
and  thin  to  the  devotee's  faith:  "To  him 
that  knocketh  it  shall  be  opened."  In  this 
spirit  he  waited  upon  nature  and  the 
motions  of  his  own  genius.  Patience,  soli- 
tude, stillness,  sincerity,  and  a  quiet  mind, 
—  these  were  the  instruments  of  his  art. 
With  them,  not  with  prying  sharp-sight- 
edness,  was  the  secret  to  be  won.  In  his 
own  phrase,  characteristic  in  its  homely 
expressiveness,  if  you  would  appreciate 
a  phenomenon,  though  it  be  only  a  fern, 
you  must  "camp  down  beside  it."  And 
you  must  invent  no  distinctions  of  great 
and  small.  The  humming  of  a  gnat  must 
be  as  significant  as  the  music  of  the 
spheres. 

Was  he  too  serious  for  his  own  good, 
whether  as  man  or  as  writer  ?  And  did 
he  sometimes  feel  himself  so  ?  Was  he 
whipping  his  own  fault  when  he  spoke 
against  conscientious,  duty-ridden  people, 
and  praised 


150         FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

"simple  laboring  folk 
Who  love  their  work, 
Whose  virtue  is  a  song  "  ? 

It  is  not  impossible,  of  course.  But  he,  too, 
loved  his  work,  —  loved  it  so  well  as  per- 
haps to  need  no  playtime.  Some  have  said 
that  he  made  too  much  of  his  "thoughts 
and  moods,'*  that  he  was  unwholesomely 
beset  with  the  idea  of  self-improvement. 
Others  have  thought  that  he  would  have 
written  better  books  had  he  stuck  closer 
to  science,  and  paid  less  court  to  poetry 
and  Buddhistic  philosophy.  Such  objec- 
tions and  speculations  are  futile.  He  did 
his  work,  and  with  it  enriched  the  world. 
In  the  strictest  sense  it  was  his  own  work. 
If  his  ideal  escaped  him,  he  did  better  than 
most  in  that  he  still  pursued  it. 


ROBERT  LOUIS   STEVENSON 


ROBERT    LOUIS    STEVENSON 

Stevenson  was  one  of  the  happy  few :  he 
knew  his  life's  business  from  childhood. 
He  was  to  write  books.  Happier  still,  and 
one  of  even  a  smaller  minority,  he  early  dis- 
covered that  authorship  is  an  art  requir- 
ing a  long  and  rigorous  apprenticeship  ; 
that,  if  a  man  is  to  write,  he  must  first 
study  how,  putting  himself  under  tuition 
and  devoting  himself  to  practice;  that  an 
author  no  more  than  a  pianist  can  begin 
with  "pieces"  and  a  public  performance. 
In  short,  Stevenson  had  from  the  begin- 
ning an  idea  of  literary  composition  as  a 
fine  art,  —  an  art  not  to  be  picked  up 
some  pleasant  day  by  the  roadside  (as 
later  in  life  he  essayed,  for  whim's  sake, 
to  pick  up  the  art  of  writing  music),  nor 
carried  away,  as  a  matter  of  course,  along 
with  other  more  or  less  useful  odds  and 
ends  of  knowledge,  from  the  grammar 
school  or  university,  but  to  be  acquired, 
if  at  all,  by  years  on  years  of  drill.    An- 


154         FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

other  man  may  write  "well  enough,"  and 
perhaps  successfully,  so  far  as  material 
rewards  go,  by  nature  and  the  rule  of 
thumb;  but  the  artist  aims  at  perfection, 
—  perfection  for  its  own  sake.  That  aim, 
the  pursuit  of  that  ideal,  is  what  makes 
him  an  artist.    And  such  was  Stevenson. 

"All  through  my  boyhood  and  youth," 
he  says,  "I  was  known  and  pointed  out 
for  tlie  pattern  of  an  idler;  and  yet  I 
was  always  busy  on  my  own  private 
end,  which  was  to  learn  to  write.  I  kept 
always  two  books  in  my  pocket,  one  to 
read,  one  to  write  in.  As  I  walked,  my 
mind  was  busy  fitting  what  I  saw  with 
appropriate  words;  when  I  sat  by  the 
roadside,  I  would  either  read,  or  a  pen- 
cil and  a  penny-version  book  would  be 
in  my  hand,  to  note  down  the  features  of 
the  scene  or  commemorate  some  halting 
stanzas." 

So  he  "  lived  with  words."  And  the 
point  of  the  confession  is  that  these  "child- 
ish tasks,"  as  he  calls  them  in  another 
place,  were  done  "consciously  for  prac- 
tice." "I  had  vowed  that  I  would  learn 
to    write.     That   was   a    proficiency   that 


ROBERT   LOUIS    STEVENSON      155 

tempted  me;  and  I  practiced  to  acquire  it, 
as  men  learn  to  whittle,  in  a  wager  with 
myself." 

But  he  did  more  than  to  practice.  A 
man  does  not  learn  to  whittle,  or  to  paint, 
or  to  play  the  flute,  by  the  primitive  pro- 
cess of  merely  trying  his  hand,  be  it  ever 
so  patiently.  The  fine  arts  are  no  longer 
things  to  be  invented,  every  man  for  him- 
self. Others  have  whittled  and  painted; 
one  generation  has  bequeathed  its  incre- 
ment of  skill  to  the  next;  here  and  there 
a  master  has  arisen,  and  the  masters  have 
set  up  a  standard;  and  now,  the  standard 
being  established,  the  essential  matter  is, 
not  to  paint  or  write  to  the  satisfaction 
of  village  critics,  but  to  prove  one's  self 
a  workman  beside  the  best  of  the  craft. 
For  this  there  needs  acquaintance  with 
the  masters'  work,  —  such  acquaintance, 
or  so  young  Stevenson  was  persuaded, 
as  could  come  from  nothing  but  an  imi- 
tative study  of  it.  And  he  set  himself  to 
imitate.  He  had  never  heard  the  dictum, 
or  he  disbelieved  it,  that  a  boy  should  read 
the  best  writers,  but  pattern  after  nobody. 
Wherever  he  saw  excellence  of  a  kind  that 


156         FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

appealed  to  him,  he  took  it  for  the  time 
being  as  his  model,  a  mark  to  aim  at.  This 
he  did  consciously  and  unashamed. 

Such  a  course  would  never  give  him 
originality;  but  no  matter.  For  the  pre- 
sent it  was  not  originality  he  was  seek- 
ing; he  was  not  yet  writing  books:  he 
was  learning  his  trade.  Whether,  having 
learned  it,  he  should  turn  out  to  have 
original  genius  to  go  with  his  knowledge 
and  put  it  to  use,  was  a  question  that  the 
event  alone  could  determine.  Originality 
is  a  gift  of  the  gods;  it  is  born  with  a 
man,  or  it  is  not  born  with  him.  The  tech- 
nique of  a  prose  style,  on  the  other  hand, 
could  be  learned,  and  Stevenson's  present 
business  was  to  learn  it,  in  the  only  way 
of  which  he  had  any  knowledge,  the  way  in 
which  his  masters  themselves  had  learned 
it,  —  practice  based  on  imitation.* 

How  could  the  boy  have  done  better.? 
He  was  called  to  write;  he  had  "the  love 
of  words"  which,  as  he  says,  marks  the 

'  After  he  began  writing,  the  question  of  an  individual  style 
took  on,  as  was  inevitable,  a  different  complexion.  In  his  early 
days  he  would  not  read  Carlyle,  and  (more  surprising)  at  forty 
or  thereabout  he  discontinued  the  reading  of  Livy;  dreading  in 
both  cases  an  injury  to  his  own  manner. 


ROBERT   LOUIS    STEVENSON       157 

writer's  vocation;  and  for  such  a  boy  "to 
work  grossly  at  the  trade,  to  forget  senti- 
ment, to  think  of  his  material  and  nothing 
else,  is,  for  a  while  at  least,  the  king's  high- 
way of  progress."  Yes,  "for  a  while;"  and 
after  the  while,  if  he  is  not  merely  one  of 
the  many  that  are  called,  but  one  of  the 
few  that  are  chosen,  he  will  have  found  his 
own  line,  and  such  originality  as  nature 
endowed  him  with  at  birth  (or  before)  will 
declare  itself  in  the  way  appointed. 

Stevenson  had  the  name  of  an  idler,  he 
tells  us,  and  it  must  be  said  that  he  wore 
it  jauntily,  —  as  he  wore  his  old  clothes. 
Whatever  he  did  or  failed  to  do,  it  would 
have  been  hard  to  catch  him  without  de- 
fense. He  wrote  "  An  Apology  for  Idlers," 
which,  as  he  confided  to  a  correspondent, 
was  "an  apology  for  R.  L.  S.;"  and  to 
this  day  it  sounds  like  a  good  one.  It 
would  do  many  a  hard-working  man  and 
useful  member  of  society  a  service  to 
read  it.  He  believed  that,  for  the  young 
especially,  a  certain  kind  and  measure  of 
idleness  is  a  profitable  kind  of  industry; 
while  they  are  seemingly  unemployed  they 
may  perchance  be  learning  something  that 


158         FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

is  really  worth  while:  "to  play  the  fiddle, 
to  know  a  good  cigar,  or  to  speak  with 
ease  and  opportunity  to  all  varieties  of 
men." 

For  himself,  like  many  another  man  of 
genius,  he  was  very  little  of  a  scholar  in 
the  traditional  sense  of  the  word.  What 
the  schools  had  taken  upon  themselves 
to  teach  were  mostly  not  the  things  that 
he  had  taken  upon  himself  to  learn.  At 
the  university  he  devised  "an  extensive 
and  highly  rational  system  of  truantry," 
and  no  one  "ever  had  more  certificates 
(of  attendance)  for  less  -education."  Like 
his  antitype  in  Mr.  Barrie's  novel,  he  could 
always  find  a  way.  No  doubt  his  personal 
attractiveness  counted  for  much  here,  as  it 
did  everywhere.  One  of  his  earlier  teach- 
ers had  pronounced  him  "  without  excep- 
tion the  most  delightful  boy  he  ever  knew;" 
and  his  mother's  testimony  is  that  his  mas- 
ters found  it  pleasanter  to  talk  with  him 
than  to  teach  him.  How  his  wits  and  his 
fine  gift  of  plausibility  helped  him  over  a 
hard  place  in  one  of  the  last  of  his  examina- 
tions— for  admission  to  the  bar —  is  related 
as  from  himself,  by  Mr.  Balfour.   The  sub- 


ROBERT   LOUIS    STEVENSON       159 

ject  in  hand  was  "  Ethical  and  Metaphysi- 
cal Philosophy,"  and  a  certain  book  had 
been  prescribed.  "  Tlie  examiner  asked  me 
a  question,"  Stevenson  says,  "and  I  had 
to  say  to  him,  'I  beg  your  pardon,  but  I 
do  not  understand  your  phraseology. '  '  It 's 
the  text-book,'  he  said.  'Yes;  but  you 
could  n't  possibly  expect  me  to  read  so 
poor  a  book  as  that.'  He  laughed  like  a 
hunchback,  and  then  put  the  question  in 
another  form.  I  had  been  reading  Mayne, 
and  answered  him  by  the  historical  method. 
They  were  probably  the  most  curious  an- 
swers ever  given  in  the  subject.  I  don't 
know  what  he  thought  of  them,  but  they 
got  me  through." 

It  is  a  good  story,  and  thoroughly 
characteristic.  There  was  "nothing  aca- 
demic in  Stevenson's  turn  of  mind,  whether 
in  youth  or  manhood.  "I  was  inclined 
to  regard  any  professor  as  a  joke,"  he  re- 
marks, in  his  "  Memoir  of  Fleeming  Jen- 
kin,"  and  the  words  may  be  taken  as  fairly 
expressive  of  his  attitude  toward  the  whole 
business  of  what  is  called  education.  The 
last  thing  he  meant  to  be  was  a  conven- 
tional man,  —  *'  a  consistent  first-class  pas- 


160         FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

senger  in  life,"  —  and  why  should  he  dis- 
quiet himself  over  a  conventional  training  ? 
Allow  him  his  own  subject  and  his  own 
method,  and  he  would  be  studious  with 
anybody. 

So  throughout  his  early  years,  as  we 
have  seen,  he  studied  the  art  of  author- 
ship. Then,  as  happens  to  all  artists,  came 
the  critical  point  of  production  or  non- 
production.  Would  the  plant  so  sedu- 
lously watered  and  tended,  so  promising 
in  the  leaf,  prove  to  be  fertile  or  sterile  ? 
Having  so  lofty  an  idea  of  his  art,  so  ex- 
alted a  standard  of  excellence  in  it,  would 
he  go  on  indefinitely  putting  himself  off 
with  preparations,  "  prelusory  gymnastic,'* 
as  he  saw  so  many  painters  doing  at  Bar- 
bizon  ("snoozers"  instead  of  painters,  cov- 
ering their  walls  with  studies,  and  never 
coming  to  the  picture),  and  as  is  so  easy  for 
art  students  of  all  kinds  to  do,  or,  having 
learned  the  handling  of  his  tools,  would  he 
set  himself  to  use  them  in  the  perform- 
ance of  a  man's  w  ork  ? 

Such  a  question  is  by  no  means  one  that 
answers  itself.  In  any  particular  case  there 
is  perhaps  more  than  an  even  chance  that 


ROBERT   LOUIS   STEVENSON       161 

the  student  will  never  have  the  industry, 
the  courage,  and  the  intellectual  and  moral 
stuff  to  accomplish,  or  even  seriously  put 
his  hand  to,  any  of  the  great  things  for 
which  he  has  so  long  been  making  ready. 
Stevenson  himself,  from  all  that  appears, 
may  have  had  at  the  beginning  a  period 
when  the  issue  hung  more  or  less  in  doubt. 
*'I  remember  a  time,"  he  wrote  afterward, 
"  when  I  was  very  idle,  and  lived  and  pro- 
fited by  that  humor."  Now,  he  says,  the 
case  is  different  with  him,  he  knows  not 
why.  Perhaps  it  is  "a  change  of  age."  He 
made  many  slight  efforts  at  reform,  "had 
a  thousand  skirmishes  to  keep  himself  at 
work  upon  particular  mornings;"  the  life 
of  Goethe  affected  him,  as  did  also  some 
noble  remarks  of  Balzac,  but  he  was  never 
conscious  of  a  struggle,  "never  registered 
a  vow,  nor  seemingly  had  anything  per- 
sonally to  do  with  the  matter."  "I  came 
about  like  a  well-handled  ship,"  he  con- 
cludes. "There  stood  at  the  wheel  that 
unknown  steersman  whom  we  call  God." 
In  his  twenty -fourth  or  twenty-fifth  year, 
at  all  events,  he  was  really  getting  under 
way,  though  for  the  present,  as  was  be- 


162         FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

coming,  with  small  ventures;  and  from 
that  time,  except  for  the  frequent  occasions 
when  illness  and  the  likelihood  of  speedy 
death  constrained  him  to  "twiddle  his  jBn- 
gers  and  play  patience,"  he  kept  his  pen 
busy  as  few  men  of  anything  like  his  phy- 
sical disabilities  and  his  roving  disposition 
have  ever  done.  For  it  is  important  to  note 
that  he  was  by  inheritance  a  wanderer. 
Even  had  his  health  allowed  it,  he  could 
never  have  sat  month  after  month  at  the 
same  desk,  turning  off  so  many  hundred 
words  as  his  daily  stint.  Once,  when  he 
has  lived  for  six  months  at  Davos,  he  writes 
to  his  friend  Colvin  that  he  is  in  a  bad 
way,  —  a  result,  he  believes,  of  having  been 
too  long  in  one  place.  "That  tells  on  my 
old  gypsy  nature;  like  a  violin  hung  up, 
I  begin  to  lose  what  music  there  was  in 
me."  And  when  his  mother  complained 
that  he  was  little  at  home,  he  bade  her  not 
be  vexed  at  his  nomadic  habits.  "I  must 
be  a  bit  of  a  vagabond;  it's  your  own  fault, 
after  all,  is  n't  it  ?  You  should  n't  have 
had  a  tramp  for  a  son." 

For   a   man  who  had   studied    author- 
ship, and  wished  to  write  not  mainly  from 


ROBERT   LOUIS    STEVENSON        163 

books,  but  from  the  experience  of  his  own 
mind  and  body,  this  ineradicable  gypsy 
strain  was  of  the  highest  vahie.  How  much 
it  imported  to  Stevenson  should  be  evident 
even  to  those  who  know  his  books  only  by 
the  backs  of  them.  Bodily  health  excepted, 
he  had  all  the  qualifications  of  a  traveler. 
Happy  man  that  he  was,  he  was  always 
a  boy,  rich  to  the  last  in  some  of  the  best 
of  youthful  virtues,  —  buoyancy,  curiosity, 
"interest  in  the  whole  page  of  experience," 
and  the  capacity  for  surprise.  The  world 
for  him  was  never  an  old  story.  When  he 
saw  a  ship  or  a  train  of  cars,  he  wished 
himself  aboard.  Discomforts  and  dangers 
were  nothing;  nay,  they  could  be  turned 
into  excellent  fun,  and  after  that  into  al- 
most as  excellent  copy.  His  spirit  was  habit- 
ually strung  up  to  out-of-door  pitch,  to 
borrow  his  own  expression.  He  felt  "the 
incommunicable  thrill  of  things."  Not  for 
him  a  staid  life  in  drawing-rooms  or  city 
clubs.  He  would  be  out  in  the  open, "  where 
men  still  live  a  man's  life."  At  forty  he 
wrote  his  own  formula  thus:  "0.55  artist, 
0.45  adventurer."  Near  the  same  time, 
being  just  from   the   island   of   Molokai, 


164         FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

where  he  had  played  croquet  with  seven 
leper  girls  (and  would  not  wear  gloves, 
though  cautioned  to  that  effect,  lest  it  should 
make  the  girls  unhappy  to  be  reminded 
of  their  condition),  he  writes  to  a  friend: 
"This  climate;  these  voyagings;  these  land- 
falls at  dawn ;  new  islands  peaking  from  the 
morning  bank;  new  forested  harbors;  new 
passing  alarms  of  squalls  and  surf;  new 
interests  of  gentle  natives, — the  whole  tale 
of  my  life  is  better  to  me  than  any  poem." 
A  lucky  combination  it  was,  both  for  the 
man  himself  and  for  the  world  of  readers, 
—  fifty-five  per  cent  artist,  and  forty-five 
per  cent  adventurer. 

And  the  adventures,  of  course,  need  not 
be  so  extraordinarily  venturesome,  with 
an  artist's  pen  to  put  them  on  the  paper. 
In  1887  Stevenson  had  been  once  more  at 
the  gates  of  death  with  hemorrhages,  this 
time  so  often  repeated  that  they  had  ceased 
almost  to  be  exciting,  and  were  rather 
grown  tiresome;  and  when  the  doctors  pre- 
scribed another  change  of  climate,  he  sailed 
for  America.  The  steamer  turned  out  to 
be  loaded  with  cattle,  —  "a  ship  with  no 
style  on,  and  plenty  of  sailors  to  talk  to;" 


ROBERT   LOUIS    STEVENSON        165 

and  this  is  how  the  consumptive  patient 
describes  the  voyage:  "I  was  so  happy  on 
board  that  ship,  I  could  not  have  beheved 
it  possible.  We  had  the  beastliest  weather, 
and  many  discomforts;  but  the  mere  fact 
of  its  being  a  tramp-ship  gave  us  many 
comforts;  we  could  cut  about  with  the  men 
and  officers,  stay  in  the  wheel-house,  dis- 
cuss all  manner  of  things,  and  really  be  a 
little  at  sea.  .  .  .  My  heart  literally  sang. 
...  It  is  worth  having  lived  these  last 
years,  partly  because  I  have  written  some 
better  books,  which  is  always  pleasant, 
but  chiefly  to  have  had  the  joy  of  this 
voyage." 

Later,  in  the  South  Seas,  he  ran  more 
than  once  upon  the  very  edge  of  ship- 
wreck, but  always  with  the  same  brave 
heart  and  the  same  gayety.  "We  had  a 
near  squeak,"  he  writes  to  a  friend,  after 
one  such  experience.  "  The  reefs  were  close 
in  with,  my  eye!  what  a  surf!  The  pilot 
thought  we  were  gone,  and  the  captain  had 
a  boat  cleared,  when  a  lucky  squall  came 
to  our  rescue.  My  wife,  hearing  the  order 
given  about  the  boats,  remarked  to  my 
mother,  '  Is  n't  that  nice  ?    We  shall  soon 


166         FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

be  ashore!'  Thus  does  the  female  mind 
unconsciously  skirt  along  the  verge  of  eter- 
nity." And  thus,  be  it  added,  does  the  ar- 
tistic masculine  mind  turn  even  the  face  of 
death  itself  "to  favor  and  to  prettiness." 

By  this  time  Stevenson  had  almost  set- 
tled it  with  himself  that  he  should  never 
again  leave  the  sea.  "My  poor  grandfa- 
ther, it  is  from  him  that  I  inherit  the  taste, 
I  fancy,  and  he  was  round  many  islands 
in  his  day;  but  I,  please  God,  shall  beat 
him  at  that  before  the  recall  is  sounded. 
.  .  .  life  is  far  better  fun  than  people 
dream  who  fall  asleep  among  the  chimney- 
stacks  and  telegraph  wires."  One  feels 
like  saying  again,  Wliat  a  blessing  it  was 
for  the  world  that  a  man  so  perennially 
boyish,  so  endowed  with  the  capacity  for 
enjoyment,  so  conscious  of  his  life,  so  in- 
curably in  love  with  the  romantic  side  of 
things,  was  also  the  master  of  a  style  and 
an  industrious  lover  of  the  art  of  writing! 

His  remark,  quoted  above,  about  the 
"plenty  of  sailors  to  talk  to"  suggests  an- 
other thing:  his  exceeding  fondness  for  rub- 
bing elbows  with  what  are  called,  inappro- 
priately enough,  common  people,  —  people 


ROBERT   LOUIS   STEVENSON        167 

who  have  lived  free  from  the  leveling,  uni- 
formity-producing, character-dulling,  com- 
monizing  influences  of  too  many  books  and 
an  excess  of  social  sophistication.  This, 
too,  was  a  real  fairy's  gift  to  a  man  des- 
tined for  literature.  "He  was  of  a  conver- 
sible  temper"  (he  is  speaking  of  himself 
in  his  youth),  '*and  insatiably  curious  in 
the  aspects  of  life."  Like  Will  o'  the  Mill, 
"he  had  a  taste  for  other  people,  and  other 
people  had  a  taste  for  him."  As  we  read 
of  his  journey ings  hither  and  thither,  and 
the  friends  he  made  almost  as  often  as  he 
opened  his  mouth,  we  are  reminded  of 
what  David  Balfour's  father  said  of  his 
offspring:  "He  is  a  steady  lad  and  a  canny 
goer;  and  I  doubt  not  he  will  come  safe, 
and  be  well  liked  where  he  goes."  Perhaps 
it  was  from  his  own  experience  that  Ste- 
venson was  writing  when  he  said  that  a 
boy  might  learn  in  his  truant  hours  "to 
know  a  good  cigar,  or  to  speak  with  ease 
and  opportunity  to  all  varieties  of  men." 

Stevenson's  books,  the  narratives  of 
travel  and  the  essays  not  less  than  the  nov- 
els, —  perhaps  even  more,  —  are  galleries 
of  portraits.    Wherever  he  went,  he  found 


168         FRIENDS   ON   THE   SHELF 

men :  not  caricatures,  mere  burlesques  and 
oddities,  cheap  material  for  print,  crea- 
tures of  a  single  crying  peculiarity,  so  easily 
drawn  and,  for  one  reading,  so  "effective;" 
nor  lay  figures  simply,  wire  frames  (litera- 
ture is  populated  with  them)  on  which  to 
hang  "the  trappings  of  composition;"  but 
breathing  men,  full,  like  the  rest  of  us,  of 
complexity  and  paradox,  nobly  designed, 
perhaps,  but  —  still  like  the  rest  of  us  — 
more  or  less  spoiled  in  tlie  making;  men 
who  had  known,  each  for  himself,  the  war 
in  the  members  (happy  for  them  if  they 
knew  it  still!),  and  had  drunk,  every  one, 
of  the  mingled  cup  of  tragedy  and  comedy. 
He  loved  the  sight  of  them;  their  talk,  wise 
or  foolish,  was  music  to  his  ears;  and  the 
queerest  and  ugliest  of  them,  under  his 
capable  and  affectionate  hand,  wear  some- 
thing of  a  human  grace  upon  the  canvas. 
It  is  a  great  gallery.  Who  that  has 
ever  walked  there  will  forget  the  old  sol- 
dier turned  beggar,  the  borrower  of  poets' 
books  ?  —  "the  wreck  of  an  athletic  man, 
tall,  gaunt,  and  bronzed;  far  gone  in  con- 
sumption, with  that  disquieting  smile  of 
the  mortally  stricken  in  his  face;    but  still 


ROBERT   LOUIS    STEVENSON        169 

active  afoot,  still  with  the  brisk  military 
carriage,  the  ready  military  salute."  We 
can  see  him,  "striding  forward  uphill,  his 
staff  now  clapped  to  the  ribs  of  his  deep, 
resonant  chest,  now  swinging  in  the  air 
with  the  remembered  jauntiness  of  the 
private  soldier;  and  all  the  while  his  toes 
looking  out  of  his  boots,  and  his  shirt 
looking  out  of  his  elbows,  and  death  look- 
ing out  of  his  smile,  and  his  big,  crazy 
frame  shaken  by  accesses  of  cough."  His 
honest  head  may  have  been  "very  nearly 
empty,  his  intellect  like  a  child's,"  but  he 
loved  the  unexpected  words  and  the  mov- 
ing cadence  of  good  verse.  We  know  his 
talk;  a  little  more,  and  we  should  hear  it: 
"Keats,  —  John  Keats,  sir, — he  was  a 
very  fine  poet." 

A  book  like  "The  Amateur  Emigrant" 
is  full  of  such  sketches,  every  one  done 
from  life,  and  hit  off  with  a  perfection  that 
might  well  render  it  and  the  volume,  as 
foolish  mortals  say,  "immortal."  It  would 
be  long  to  enumerate  them,  though  it  is  a 
short  book.  There  is  Jones  the  Welshman, 
for  example,  —  "niy  excellent  friend  Mr. 
Jones,"  owner  and  dispenser  of  the  Golden 


170         FRIENDS   ON   THE   SHELF 

Oil;  "hovering  round  inventions  like  a  bee 
over  a  flower,  and  living  in  a  dream  of 
patents."  He  had  been  rich,  and  now  was 
poor,  but,  like  all  dabblers  in  patents,  he 
had  "a  nature  that  looked  forward."  "If 
the  sky  were  to  fall  to-morrow,  I  should  look 
to  see  Jones,  the  day  following,  perched  on 
a  step-ladder  and  getting  things  to  rights." 
What  we  should  have  cared  most  to  see 
was  Mr.  Jones  and  Mr.  Stevenson  walk- 
ing the  deck  by  the  hour  and  dissecting 
their  neighbors;  for  Jones  was  first  of  all  a 
student  of  character.  "  Whenever  a  quaint 
or  human  trait  slipped  out  in  conversation, 
you  might  have  seen  Jones  and  me  ex- 
changing glances;  and  we  could  hardly  go 
to  bed  in  comfort  till  we  had  exchanged 
notes  and  discussed  the  day's  experience. 
We  were  then  like  a  couple  of  anglers  com- 
paring a  day's  kill."  And  there  is  the 
fiddler,  "carrying  happiness  about  with 
him  in  his  fiddle-case,"  a  "  white-faced 
Orpheus  cheerily  playing  to  an  audience 
of  white-faced  women,"  with  his  fiery  bit 
of  a  brother,  who  "made  a  god  of  the 
fiddler,"  and  was  determined  that  every- 
body else  should  do  the  same;  and  Mac- 


ROBERT   LOUIS   STEVENSON        171 

kay,  the  cynic  and  debater,  who  professed 
to  believe  in  nothing  but  what  had  to  do 
with  food  ("that's  the  bottom  and  the 
top"),  but  who  once  grew  so  eager  in  main- 
taining this  noble  thesis  that  he  slipped 
the  meal  hour,  and  was  compelled,  with  a 
smile  of  shamefacedness,  to  go  without  his 
tea;  and  Barney  the  Irishman,  the  univer- 
sal favorite,  so  natural  and  happy,  with  his 
"tight  little  figure,  unquenchable  gayety, 
and  indefatigable  good  will,"  who  could 
sing  most  acceptably  and  play  all  man- 
ner of  innocent  pranks,  but  whose  "drab 
clothes  were  immediately  missing  from  the 
group"  when,  after  the  ladies  had  retired, 
some  one  struck  up  an  indecent  song;  and 
the  sick  man  (poor  soul),  who  thought  it 
was  "by"  with  him,  and  who  had  a  good 
house  at  home,  and  "no  call  to  be  here;" 
and  the  two  stowaways,  so  fond  of  each 
other,  yet  so  strikingly  contrasted,  —  one 
so  ready  to  work  for  his  passage,  the  other 
"a  skulker  in  the  grain,"  and  like  the  devil 
himself  for  lying. 

And  besides  these  there  are  numbers 
more  nearly  or  quite  as  telling;  but  they 
must  be  let  pass,  though  it  is  pleasant  to 


172         FRIENDS   ON   THE    SHELF 

pick  good  things  out  of  a  book  that,  com- 
paratively speaking,  seems  to  have  been 
little  made  of,  either  by  the  author  or  by 
his  admirers.  To  one  of  these,  at  least, 
"The  Amateur  Emigrant"  seems,  not  one 
of  Stevenson's  greatest  books,  indeed,  but 
certainly  one  of  the  most  enjoyable,  say 
on  the  sixth  or  eighth  reading. 

It  is  a  point  of  grace  with  any  writer, 
and  a  very  sine  qua  non  with  the  essay- 
ist, that  he  should  be  able  to  speak  often 
of  himself  without  offense,  as  Montaigne 
and  Lamb  did,  to  mention  two  shining 
and  incontestable  examples.  And  the  trick 
(though  it  is  not  a  trick,  but  an  admirable 
quality,  and  almost  as  far  as  honesty 
from  being  common)  is  none  of  your  easy 
ones.  To  begin  with,  the  venturer  on  such 
an  experiment  must  be  interested  in  him- 
self, which  is  by  no  means  an  ordinary 
happening.  Most  men,  we  may  say,  count 
for  nullities  under  this  head;  they  recog- 
nize their  outward  presentments  in  the 
glass,  no  doubt,  and  are  letter-perfect  with 
their  names  and  occupations ;  but  for  a 
knowledge  of  their  inner  selves,  the  story 
of  their  real  lives,  the  "w^onderful  pageant 


ROBERT   LOUIS    STEVENSON        173 

of  consciousness,"  one  might  almost  as  well 
interrogate  the  lamp-post  on  the  next  cor- 
ner. They  have  never  kept  company  with 
their  own  thoughts,  nor  been  in  the  least 
degree  inquisitive  about  them.  Life,  as 
they  live  it,  is  a  matter  of  externals,  of  eat- 
ing and  drinking  and  being  clothed,  of 
getting  and  spending  more  or  less  money, 
of  being  amused,  of  movings  up  or  down 
on  a  social  ladder.  As  for  the  past,  the  past 
of  themselves,  —  which  with  another  man 
is  his  dearest  possession,  —  it  is  mainly  as 
if  it  had  never  been.  They  must  have  had 
a  boy's  dreams  once,  one  would  think,  but 
that  was  long,  long  ago,  and  the  dreamer 
is  dead,  and  his  dreams  with  him. 

But  if  a  man  is  to  tell  the  world  about 
himself,  and  charm  it  into  attention,  he 
must  not  only  be  in  love  with  his  subject; 
he  must  have  a  natural  frankness,  an  un- 
affected and  almost  unconscious  delight 
in  self -revelation,  —  tempered  by  a  decent 
sense  of  personal  privacy,  —  such  as  in- 
fallibly commends  itself  and  makes  its 
way,  the  listener  cannot  tell  how.  In  other 
words,  and  in  a  good  sense,  the  man  must 
be  still  a  boy,  endowed  with  a  boy's  win- 


174         FRIENDS   ON   THE   SHELF 

ning  attributes,  and  entitled,  therefore,  to 
something  of  a  boy's  privilege.  And  with 
all  the  rest,  and  among  the  most  important, 
he  must  be  favored  with  the  gracious  qual- 
ity of  humor.  Of  all  talk  whatsoever,  talk 
about  one's  self  must  not  be  too  serious. 
No  man  (or  none  but  a  great  poet)  can 
safely  indulge  in  it  unless  it  is  natural  for 
him  to  see  the  funny  side  of  his  own  foibles, 
and  at  the  right  minute  to  make  his  point 
at  his  own  expense.  All  of  which  is  per- 
haps no  more  than  to  say  that  the  writer 
in  the  first  person  must  be  a  man  of  taste, 
knowing  (a  wisdom  which  nobody  under 
the  sun  can  teach  him)  what  to  say  and 
what  not  to  say,  and,  chief  est  of  all,  how 
and  when  to  say  it. 

Stevenson  did  not  talk  of  himself  so 
freely  as  Montaigne  (how  could  he,  in  these 
proper  days  ?)  nor,  the  present  scribe  being 
judge,  so  adorably  as  Lamb.  Nature  her- 
self is  little  likely  to  hit  the  white  centre  of 
perfection  twice,  and  we  shall  perhaps  see 
another  Shakespeare  as  soon  as  another 
Lamb ;  but  few  have  loved  a  personal 
theme  better,  and  in  the  handling  of  it 
there  were  none  among  the  living  to  sur- 


ROBERT   LOUIS   STEVENSON         175 

pass  him.  He  had  every  qualification  for 
the  work.  A  pity  he  died  at  forty-four, — 
a  pity  in  every  aspect  of  the  case,  but  es- 
pecially when  it  is  considered  what  trea- 
sures of  youthful  reminiscence  he  would 
have  left  behind  him  had  he  lived  even  to 
the  approaches  of  old  age.  Such  a  devotee 
of  his  own  past  should  have  been  spared  to 
see  it  through  a  bluer  haze.  Yet  even  in 
middle  life  how  fair  it  looked  to  him,  and 
how  lovingly  he  laid  its  colors  as  he  trans- 
ferred the  picture  to  the  page!  Hear  him 
speak  of  his  grandfather,  in  a  passage 
no  better  than  is  common  with  him,  and 
dealing  with  nothing  out  of  the  ordinary :  — 
"  Now  I  often  wonder  what  I  have  inher- 
ited from  this  old  minister.  I  must  suppose, 
indeed,  that  he  was  fond  of  preaching  ser- 
mons, and  so  am  I,  though  I  never  heard 
it  maintained  that  either  of  us  loved  to 
hear  them.  He  sought  health  in  his  youth 
in  the  Isle  of  Wight,  and  I  have  sought  it 
in  both  hemispheres;  but  whereas  he  found 
and  kept  it,  I  am  still  on  the  quest.  He 
was  a  great  lover  of  Shakespeare,  whom  he 
read  aloud,  I  have  been  told,  with  taste; 
well,  I  love  my  Shakespeare,  also,  and  am 


176         FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

persuaded  I  can  read  him  well,  though  I 
own  I  never  have  been  told  so.  He  made 
embroidery,  designing  his  own  patterns  ; 
and  in  that  kind  of  work  I  never  made 
anything  but  a  kettle-holder  in  Berlin  wool, 
and  an  odd  garter  of  knitting,  which  was 
as  black  as  the  chimney  before  I  had  done 
with  it.  He  loved  port,  and  nuts,  and 
porter;  and  so  do  I,  but  they  agreed  better 
with  my  grandfather,  which  seems  to  me  a 
breach  of  contract.  He  had  chalkstones  in 
his  fingers;  and  these  in  good  time  I  may 
inherit,  but  I  would  much  rather  have  in- 
herited his  noble  presence.  Try  as  I  please, 
I  cannot  join  myself  on  with  the  reverend 
doctor;  and  all  the  while,  no  doubt,  and 
even  as  I  write  the  phrase,  he  moves  in 
my  blood,  and  whispers  words  to  me,  and 
sits  efficient  in  the  very  knot  and  centre  of 
my  being." 

A  man  could  talk  of  himself  in  that  strain 
till  the  sun  put  the  stars  out,  and  nobody 
would  vote  him  tiresome  or  blame  him  for 
an  egotist.  Yes,  a  misfortune  it  was  that 
he  could  not  have  lived  to  write  a  dozen 
books  full  of  essays  like  "The  Manse," 
"Old  Mortality,"  "Memoirs  of  an  Islet," 


ROBERT   LOUIS    STEVENSON        177 

and  especially  "A  Gossip  on  a  Novel 
of  Dumas's."  So  appreciative  a  reader 
and  so  entertaining  a  talker  could  never 
have  wearied  us  with  gossip  of  his  favorite 
books,  "the  inner  circle  of  his  intimates;" 
and  the  more  first-personal  and  confiden- 
tial he  became,  the  better  we  should  have 
liked  it. 

Well,  since  we  cannot  have  the  finished 
essays,  we  will  be  the  more  thankful  for  the 
letters.  How  good  they  are!  —  so  varied, 
so  spontaneous,  so  free-spoken,  so  humanly 
wise  and  so  deliciously  nonsensical ;  now 
bubbling  over  with  jest,  now  touching  the 
deepest  springs  of  thought  and  action;  fit 
expression  of  a  man  who  was  himself  both 
Ariel  and  Prospero;  "an  old,  stern,  un- 
happy devil  of  a  Norseman,"  yet  with 
"always  some  childishness  on  hand;"  the 
"grandson  of  the  Manse,"  who  would  rise 
from  the  grave  to  preach,  and  has  "scarce 
broken  a  commandment  to  mention,"  yet 
owning  it  as  his  darling  wish  to  be  a  pirate. 
Whim  and  opinion,  settled  conviction  and 
passing  mood,  alike  find  utterance  in  them; 
and  best  of  all,  perhaps,  many  of  them  are 
most  engagingly  rich   in  matter  connected 


178         FRIENDS   ON   THE    SHEI.F 

with  his  own  pursuit.  A  selection  of  these 
in  a  handy  vohime  (why  must  letters  always 
be  put  up  in  a  form  too  cumbersome  for 
lovers'  convenience,  as  if  they,  more  than 
other  books,  were  expected  to  stand  for- 
ever upon  a  shelf  ?)  would  go  far  to  supply 
the  place  of  that  treatise  on  "The  Art  of 
Literature"  which  their  author  spoke  so 
frequently  of  making. 

Here  would  be  found  a  letter  to  Mr. 
Marcel  Schwob,  a  letter  one  page  long, 
but  weighty  with  the  subtlest  and  pithi- 
est  criticism,  not  of  Mr.  Schwob's  writ- 
ings alone  (that  might  not  seem  so  very 
important),  but  of  writing  in  general,  and 
in  particular  of  Stevenson's.  For  it  is 
impossible  to  read  it  without  perceiving 
that  the  critic  is  passing  judgment  (no 
unkind  one)  upon  his  own  early  books 
of  sentimental  travel.  His  correspondent 
has  sent  him  a  volume  of  verses.  He  has 
read  it  through  twice,  and  is  reading  it 
again,  —  a  handsome  compliment,  to  start 
with.  It  is  essentially  graceful,  he  says, 
but  is  a  thing  of  promise  rather  than 
a  thing  final  in  itself.  "You  have  yet  to 
give  to  us  —  and   I  am  expecting  it  with 


ROBERT   LOUIS   STEVENSON         179 

impatience  —  something  of  a  larger  gait; 
something  dayht,  not  twilit ;  something 
with  the  colors  of  life,  not  the  flat  tints 
of  a  temple  illumination;  something  that 
shall  be  said  with  all  the  clearnesses  and 
the  trivialities  of  speech,  not  sung  like  a 
semi-articulate  lullaby.  It  will  not  please 
yourself  as  well,  but  it  will  please  others 
better.  It  will  be  more  of  a  whole,  more 
worldly,  more  nourished,  more  common- 
place —  and  not  so  pretty,  perhaps  not 
even  so  beautiful.  No  man  knows  better 
than  I  that,  as  we  go  on  in  life,  we  must 
part  from  prettiness  and  the  graces.  We 
but  attain  qualities  to  lose  them;  life  is  a 
series  of  farewells,  even  in  art;  even  our 
proficiencies  are  deciduous  and  evanescent. 
So  here  with  these  exquisite  pieces,  .  .  . 
you  will  perhaps  never  excel  them.  .  .  . 
Well,  you  will  do  something  else,  and  of 
that  I  am  in  expectation." 

Happy  poet !  to  be  caressed  so  affec- 
tionately and  lanced  so  beneficently  with 
one  stroke  of  the  master's  hand;  and 
happy  critic,  no  less!  having  sentences 
of  this  quality  to  drop  without  a  second 
thought,  like  small  change  from  the  hand 


180         FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

of  wealth,  into  the  oblivion  of  private 
correspondence. 

In  truth,  Stevenson  could  afford  to  be 
generous ;  he  had  always  good  things 
enough  and  to  spare.  His  was  a  mind 
incessantly  active.  He  was  always  cov- 
ering paper.  If  only  disease  would  leave 
him  strength  enough  to  hold  the  pen,  he 
could  be  trusted  to  keep  it  going.  Ideas 
thronged  upon  him;  books  by  the  dozen, 
one  may  almost  say,  stood  waiting  for 
him  to  make  them.  The  more  wonder 
that,  with  all  this  excess  of  fertility,  he 
could  yet  rewrite  and  rewrite,  and  then 
write  again,  still  on  the  search  for  perfec- 
tion.   Surely  the  artist  was  strong  in  him. 

His  fame  was  of  slow  growth,  surprising 
as  the  fact  seems  now,  till  he  wrote  nov- 
els. These,  as  all  the  world  knows,  since 
all  the  world  reads  them,  are  nothing 
like  the  ordinary  modern  novel  of  carpet 
knights  and  pairs  of  happy  or  unhappy 
lovers.  They  are  romances  in  the  heroic 
vein,  spun  mostly  of  a  single  thread,  with  no 
lack  of  high  lights,  plenty  of  blood-letting, 
a  good  spice  of  humor,  dialogue  that  is 
closely  pared   and   talks  of  itself,  charac- 


ROBERT   LOUIS    STEVENSON       181 

ter  displayed  in  action,  not  dissected, 
and  movement  to  delight  the  lover  of  a 
story. 

The  lode  was  struck,  almost  by  acci- 
dent, when  Stevenson's  schoolboy  step- 
son, backed  by  another  "schoolboy  in 
disguise,"  —  namely,  Stevenson's  father, 
—  begged  him  to  "write  something  inter- 
esting." The  response  to  this  reasonable 
request  was  *'  Treasure  Island,"  which  not 
only  filled  the  schoolboys'  bill,  but  cap- 
tivated so  stout-hearted  a^  disbeliever  in 
things  romantic  as  Mr.  Henry  James.  As 
it  was  this  story  that  introduced  its  author 
to  a  wider  public,  he  used  to  speak  of  it 
(possibly  with  a  shade  of  irony,  though 
that  does  not  certainly  appear)  as  his  first 
book. 

It  may  be  that  the  gift  of  romance  was 
the  highest  of  his  endowments.  Some,  at 
least,  have  thought  so,  and  have  reck- 
oned the  novels  as  not  only  the  most  popu- 
lar, but  the  greatest  of  his  works.  As  to 
the  choice  among  them,  the  question  of 
their  comparative  excellence  among  them- 
selves, that  is  a  matter  not  under  discussion 
here,  the  writer  of  the  present  paper  hav- 


182         FRIENDS   ON   THE   SHELF 

ing  no  sort  of  competency  for  dealing  with 
it.  His  own  special  delight  is  in  "  David 
Balfour  "  (the  two  parts)  and  "  Treasure 
Island."  These  he  hopes  to  read  —  now 
and  then  a  chapter,  if  no  more — as  long  as 
he  reads  anything.  He  likes  the  men,  — 
and  the  women,  —  and  he  likes  the  talk. 
Mr.  James's  comment  upon  "Treasure 
Island,"  that  one  seems  to  be  reading  it 
over  a  schoolboy's  shoulder,  strikes  him  as 
extremely  ingenious  and  pretty,  but  he  is 
conscious  of  nothing  of  that  nature  him- 
self. He  reads  it,  if  he  may  be  allowed 
to  say  so,  on  his  own  hook,  and  for  the 
time  being  is  himself  the  schoolboy,  — 
which  may  or  may  not  be  the  better  fun. 
He  likes  the  story  and  the  pictures,  — for 
every  chapter  is  a  picture,  —  and  he  likes 
the  writing. 

Concerning  this  last  point,  so  often  dis- 
cussed, what  shall  be  said  ?  As  Steven- 
son's nature  was  complex  and  his  themes 
varied,  so  he  wrote  in  many  keys.  His 
prose  was  never  "far  from  variation  and 
quick  change."  When  he  put  pen  to  any 
work,  —  essay,  travel,  sketch,  tragedy,  or 
comedy,  —  the   first   thing    was    to   strike 


ROBERT   LOUIS   STE\^NSON      183 

"the  essential  note."  He  would  not  begin 
a  funeral  march  in  A  major,  nor  a  sailor's 
hornpipe  in  C  minor;  a  requiem  for  the 
friend  of  his  youth  was  one  thing,  and  a 
description  of  his  fellow  passengers  in  the 
steerage  was  another:  and,  strange  to  tell, 
here  and  there  a  wise  critic,  wise  above 
what  is  written,  has  discovered  in  this 
change  of  key  proof  of  a  want  of  original- 
ity. "Behold,"  he  cries,  "the  man  has  no 
style  of  his  own;  to-day  he  writes  in  one 
manner,  and  to-morrow  in  another."  The 
same  sharp-eyed  reviewers  are  certain  to 
be  troubled  because  Stevenson  talks  freely 
of  style,  openly  professing  to  have  culti- 
vated one,  —  to  have  cared  not  only  for 
what  he  said,  but  almost  or  quite  as  much 
for  the  way  in  which  he  said  it.  "How 
can  a  man  be  concerned  with  the  niceties 
of  expression,  and  yet  be  true  to  himself  .'*" 
they  seem  ready  to  ask.  A  question  to 
which,  it  must  b^  admitted,  there  is  no 
answer,  or  none  worth  the  offering  to  any 
who  need  to  ask  for  it. 

To  be  greatly  occupied  with  matters  of 
form  is  doubtless  to  subject  one's  self  to 
peril.    Careful  writing  may  easily  become 


184         FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

mannered  (as  careless  writing  also  may, 
and  with  less  excuse);  but  what  then? 
Danger  is  the  common  lot.  An  author, 
not  less  than  other  men,  must  face  it, 
whether  he  will  or  no.  He  may  choose 
between  one  set  of  pitfalls  and  another, 
but  he  will  find  no  path  without  them.  As 
for  the  risk  of  mannerism,  Stevenson  es- 
caped it  substantially  unharmed.  Com- 
pared with  some  of  the  more  famous  of 
his  style-loving  contemporaries,  he  may  be 
said  to  have  come  off  without  a  scratch. 
Wliether  his  style  is  better  or  worse  than 
theirs  (and  touching  a  point  so  delicate 
an  unprofessional  critic  may  prudently  re- 
serve his  opinion)  is  a  different  matter;  at 
least,  it  is  less  tagged  with  peculiarity.  It 
was  formed,  as  style  should  be,  by  the 
study  of  many  models,  not  of  one;  and  it 
has  many  virtues,  including  in  good  mea- 
sure one  of  the  highest,  rarest,  and  most 
elusive,  the  quality  of  pleasurableness,  or 
charm,  —  a  quality  not  to  be  acquired  by 
labor,  nor  to  be  exactly  defined;  a  some- 
thing added  to  a  thing  already  complete, 
like  the  bloom  on  the  grape  or  the  perfume 
of  the  rose. 


ROBERT   I.OUIS   STEVENSON       185 

If  the  style  has  failings,  also;  if  one 
feels  now  and  then,  in  the  more  closely 
wrought  of  the  essays  especially,  a  cer- 
tain excess  of  precision,  a  seeming  hard- 
ness of  outline,  a  lack,  shall  we  say,  of 
flexibility;  if,  after  a  time,  one  experi- 
ences a  sensation  as  of  walking  in  too 
continuously  strong  a  light,  with  the  sun, 
as  it  were,  standing  still  at  high  noon; 
if  one  misses  those  momentary  glimpses 
of  invisible  truth,  those  hints  and  adum- 
brations of  things  beyond  the  writer's 
and  the  reader's  ken  (a  feeling  as  if  twi- 
light were  coming  on,  and  shadows  were 
falling  across  the  page),  those  touches 
of  distance  and  mystery  which  make  the 
peculiar  attractiveness  of  another  order  of 
writing;  if  this,  and  perhaps  more  than 
this  (an  occasional  want  of  absolute  suc- 
cess in  the  use  of  the  file;  a  failure,  that  is 
to  say,  to  leave  the  phrase  looking  only 
the  more  unstudied  for  the  labor  bestowed 
upon  it),  —  if  things  like  these  are  felt  at 
times  by  the  sensitive  reader,  what  does 
it  all  signify  but  that,  in  the  perception 
and  expression  of  truth,  as  in  the  making 
of  moral  character,  one  excellence  of  neces- 


186         FRIENDS   ON   THE    SHELF 

sity  excludes  or  dwarfs  another,  and  per- 
fection is  still  to  seek?  As  the  French 
martyr  said  ("a dread  confession,"  Steven- 
son called  it,  in  one  of  his  moods),  "Prose 
is  never  done." 

The  estimate  which  the  author  him- 
self placed  upon  his  style  (though  this  is 
a  point  of  little  consequence)  seems  not 
to  have  been  exalted.  He  had  his  gift,  he 
knew,  and  had  done  his  best  to  improve  it; 
but  other  men  had  greater  ones.  He  was 
an  enthusiastic  reader,  and  while  still  fresh 
from  the  enjoyment  of  "A  Window  in 
Thrums,"  he  wrote  to  Mr.  Barrie:  "There 
are  two  of  us  now  [two  Scotchmen]  that 
the  Shirra  might  have  patted  on  the  head. 
And  please  do  not  think,  when  I  seem 
thus  to  bracket  myself  with  you,  that  I  am 
wholly  blinded  with  vanity.  Jess  is  beyond  * 
my  frontier  line;  I  could  not  touch  her 
skirt;  I  have  no  such  glamour  of  twilight 
on  my  pen.  I  am  a  capable  artist;  but  it 
begins  to  look  to  me  as  if  you  were  a  man 
of  genius.  Take  care  of  yourself  for  my 
sake." 

A  handsome  thing  for  a  man  to  write, 
and   a  pleasant   thing  for   his    lovers    to 


ROBERT   LOUIS   STEVENSON       187 

remember,  but,  as  we  say,  not  to  be  in- 
terpreted too  strictly,  as  if  it  settled  any- 
thing. The  more  considerable  a  man's 
gifts,  the  more  likely  he  is  to  speak  dispar- 
agingly of  them.  To  take  his  own  word 
for  it,  Stevenson  was  a  poor  letter-writer, 
"essentially  and  originally  incapable."  So 
he  assures  one  of  his  correspondents ; 
and  then,  the  mood  coming  on  him,  he 
proceeds  to  cover  page  after  page  with 
the  very  scintillations  of  epistolary  genius, 
—  compliment,  gossip,  humor,  brilliant 
description,  verbal  felicities,  sweetness  of 
personal  feeling,  everything,  in  short,  that 
goes  to  the  making  of  a  perfect  letter. 
No  doubt  he  smiled  at  the  incongruity  of 
the  thing  as  he  folded  the  sheet  (for  no 
doubt  he  knew  he  had  done  well),  but  what 
shall  we  conclude  as  to  the  value  of  an 
honest  author's  depreciatory  judgment  of 
his  own  work.?  If  it  is  not  a  proverb,  it 
ought  to  be,  that  self-dispraise  goes  little 
ways. 

The  welcome  of  Stevenson  to  his  younger 
Scotch  contemporary  was  characteristic  of 
the  man.  In  all  his  letters  there  is  not 
a  glimmer  of  professional   jealousy  nor  a 


188         FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

word  of  belittling  criticism.  With  all  his 
boyishness,  —  partly  because  of  it,  it  might 
be  truer  to  say,  —  he  had  a  manly  heart. 
Generosity  and  courage  were  matters  of 
course  with  him,  native  to  the  blood.  In 
his  novels  there  is  plenty  —  some  would 
say  a  superfluity  —  of  battle,  murder,  and 
sudden  death;  Cut  and  Thrust  were  two 
of  his  favorite  heroes;  he  loved  the  breath 
of  danger,  and  when,  for  the  first  and  last 
time,  he  saw  armed  men  taking  the  field, 
*'the  old  aboriginal  awoke"  in  him,  and 
he  sniffed  the  air  like  a  war  horse;  he 
could  be  stern  as  the  Judgment  Day  it- 
self against  injustice  and  cruelty;  in  such 
a  cause  he  would  break  a  lance,  though 
all  the  world  should  call  him,  what  he 
was  once  overheard  to  call  himself,  another 
Don  Quixote;  but  withal,  few  men  were 
ever  more  tender-hearted.  At  twenty-one, 
as  he  told  the  story  more  than  twenty 
years  afterward,  he  enjoyed  a  great  day  of 
fishing;  the  trout  so  many  and  so  hungry 
that  in  his  eagerness  he  forgot  to  kill  them 
one  by  one  as  he  took  them  from  the  water. 
In  the  small  hours  of  the  night  his  con- 
science smote  him;  he  saw  the  fishes  "still 


ROBERT   LOUIS    STEVENSON       189 

kicking  in  their  agony ; "  and  he  never  fished 
again.  Whoever  was  in  distress  was  sure 
not  only  of  his  sympathy,  but  of  his  hand 
and  purse.  He  would  walk  the  streets  of  a 
city  half  the  night  with  a  lost  child  in  his 
arms,  invalid  though  he  was;  and  when  he 
comes  to  clear  the  land  of  his  new  South 
Sea  domain,  he  wonders  whether  any  one 
else  ever  felt  toward  Nature  just  as  he  does. 
He  pities  the  vines  and  grasses  that  he 
uproots:  "their  struggles  go  to  my  heart 
like  supplications."  Since  his  death,  says 
his  biographer,  the  native  chiefs  —  "gentle 
barbarians,"  truly  —  have  forbidden  the 
use  of  firearms  on  the  hillside  where  he  is 
buried,  "that  the  birds  may  live  there 
undisturbed." 

Stevenson  believed  in  the  supremacy 
of  the  soul.  He  would  not  be  put  down 
by  things  material.  Many  years  he  lived 
face  to  face  with  death,  and  to  the  last  his 
testimony  was  that  he  found  his  life  good. 
To  a  critic  who  thought  him  too  little 
appreciative  of  the  darker  side  of  human 
existence  he  wrote :  "  If  you  have  had  trials, 
sickness,  the  approach  of  death,  the  alien- 
ation   of    friends,    poverty   at    the    heels. 


190         FRIENDS    ON   THE   SHELF 

and  have  not  felt  your  soul  turn  round 
upon  these  things  and  spurn  them  under, 
you  must  be  very  differently  made  from 
me,  and,  I  earnestly  believe,  from  the  ma- 
jority of  men."  Such  was  his  brave  con- 
fession ;  and  his  life,  from  all  we  see  of 
it,  was  in  full  accordance  with  his  faith. 
It  might  be  said  of  him  what  Lowell  said 
of  Chaucer:  he  was  "so  truly  pious  that 
he  could  be  happy  in  the  best  world  that 
God  chose  to  make." 

Toward  the  last,  it  is  true,  he  fell  into 
a  state  of  depression,  and  for  a  time  was 
alarmingly  unlike  his  old  self.  His  power 
of  work  seemed  to  be  gone,  and  the  "  com- 
plicated miseries"  that  surrounded  him 
weighed  hard  upon  his  spirits.  Even  then, 
however,  le  protested  his  belief  in  *'an 
ultimate  decency  of  things ;  ay,  and  if  I 
woke  in  hell,  should  still  believe  it. "  This 
was  his  natural  religion,  which  the  early 
loss  of  his  ancestral  creed- — that  "dam- 
natory creed"  with  which  his  childhood 
was  "pestered  almost  to  madness"  — had 
only  deepened  and  irradiated.  And  the 
dark  and  sterile  mood  was  no  more  than 
a  mood,  after  all.    Soon   he  was  writing 


ROBERT   LOUIS    STEVENSON       191 

again,  more  successfully  than  ever.  And 
then,  with  everything  bright  before  him, 
his  powers  working  at  their  easiest  and 
best,  his  prayer  for  "courage,  gayety,  and 
the  quiet  mind "  fully  answered,  all  at 
once  the  end  came.  The  brief  candle,  that 
so  often  had  flickered  and  burned  low, 
was  suddenly  blown  out.  He  had  gone 
round  more  islands  than  his  lighthouse- 
building  grandfather,  as  it  amused  him 
once  to  boast,  and  now,  like  his  grand- 
father, he  had  reached  "the  end  of  all  his 
cruising." 

"Home  is  the  sailor,  home  from  sea, 
And  the  hunter  home  from  the  hill." 

Over  his  grave,  almost  before  his  body 
could  be  lowered  into  it,  there  rose  the 
inevitable  buzz  of  critical  surmise  and 
questioning.  Human  nature  is  impatient. 
It  believes  in  ranks  and  orders,  and  must 
have  the  labels  on  at  once.  Were  Ste- 
venson's books  really  great,  it  desired  to 
know,  —  as  great  as  those  of  such  and 
such  anotlier  man  ?  Or  were  his  admirers 
—  whose  regrets  and  acclamations,  it  must 
be  owned,  made  at  that  minute  a  pretty 


192         FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

busy  chorus  —  setting  him  on  too  lofty 
a  pedestal  and  stirring  about  him  too 
dense  a  "dust  of  praise"?  A  few  disin- 
terested souls  seemed  surely  to  believe  it, 
and  were  in  great  perturbation  accord- 
ingly. To  listen  to  them  one  might  have 
supposed  that  the  very  foundations  were 
being  destroyed.  And  then  what  should  the 
righteous  do  ? 

They  need  not  have  troubled  them- 
selves. The  world  will  last  a  long  time 
yet,  and  our  little  breath  of  praise  or  blame 
will  speedily  blow  itself  out  and  be  forgot- 
ten. As  was  said  of  Hazlitt,  so  it  must 
be  said  of  Stevenson :  Time  will  tell.  Not 
that  it  will  of  necessity  tell  the  truth ;  since 
what  we  dignify  as  the  verdict  of  Time 
is,  after  all,  in  a  certain  way  of  looking  at 
it,  nothing  but  the  opinion  of  the  major- 
ity ;  but  at  least  it  will  have  the  force  of 
a  last  word,  —  there  will  be  nobody  to 
dispute  it. 

Meanwhile,  there  is  no  reason  in  the 
nature  of  things  why  those  who  admire 
Stevenson,  or  any  other  contemporary, 
should  be  frightened  out  of  saying  so.  Our 
judgment  may  be  wrong,  of  course;    but 


ROBERT   LOUIS    STEVENSON        193 

also  it  may  be  right;  and  right  or  wrong, 
if  it  be  modestly  held,  there  can  be  no 
law  against  its  utterance.  And  if  we  are 
to  speak  at  all,  we  must  speak  while  we 
can,  — unless,  to  be  sure,  we  are  to  call  no 
man  happy  till  after  we  are  dead. 


A  RELISH   OF   KEATS 


A   RELISH    OF   KEATS 

In  all  the  writing  of  genius,  which  is  a 
power  that  possesses  its  so-called  pos- 
sessor rather  than  is  possessed  by  him, 
there  is  much  that  seems  like  accident. 
Many  things  —  all  the  best  ones,  it  might 
not  be  too  much  to  say  —  are  contributed 
by  the  pen  rather  than  by  the  man.  The 
man  had  never  thought  of  them;  it  was 
no  more  within  his  intention  to  write  them 
than  to  write  another  "Hamlet;"  and 
suddenly  there  they  are  before  him  on  the 
paper.  The  handwriting  is  his,  but  as  to 
where  the  words  came  from,  he  can  tell 
hardly  more  than  his  most  illiterate  neigh- 
bor. From  No-Man's-Land,  if  you  please 
to  say  so. 

Keats  was  proudly  conscious  of  this 
mystery.  There  is  nothing,  indeed,  upon 
which  he,  or  any  poet,  could  half  so  rea- 
sonably felicitate  himself.  His  divinest 
verses,  he  knew  it  and  owned  it,  were 
traced  for  him   by   "the   magic  hand   of 


198  FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

chance."  A  great  thing,  a  power  almost 
omnipotent,  is  this  that  we  call  by  that 
convenient,  ignorance-disguising  name.  It 
made  not  only  Keats's  verses,  but  Keats 
himself.  Otherwise  how  explain  him.^ 
—  son  of  a  stable-keeper,  a  play-loving, 
belligerent,  unstudious  boy,  a  surgeon's 
apprentice  at  fifteen,  dead  at  twenty-six, 
and  before  that  —  and  henceforth  —  one 
of  the  chief  glories  of  England,  a  poet, 
"with  Shakespeare." 

He  himself  suspected  nothing  of  his 
gift,  so  far  as  appears,  till  he  was  eighteen. 
Then  he  read  the  '*  Fairy  Queen,"  fell 
under  its  enchantment,  and  immediately,  or 
very  soon,  minding  an  inward  call,  began 
trying  his  own  hand  at  verses.  At  first 
they  were  no  more  than  verses,  "neither 
precocious  nor  particularly  promising," 
says  Mr.  Colvin;  things  that  a  man  takes 
a  certain  pleasure  in  doing,  — 

"  There  is  a  pleasure  in  poetic  pains 
Which  only  poets  know,"  — 

and  finds,  it  may  be,  a  certain  kind  of 
profit  in  doing,  but  sees  to  be  of  no  value 
as  soon  as  they  are  done. 


A  RELISH  OF  KEATS  199 

At  twenty  the  vein  began  to  show  the 
gold.  He  assayed  the  shining  particles,  for 
by  this  time  he  had  been  reading  Shake- 
speare and  Milton,  and  knew  a  line  of 
poetry  when  he  saw  it,*  and,  like  the  man 
in  the  parable,  he  did  not  hesitate.  He 
knew  what  he  wanted.  He  would  sell  all 
that  he  had  and  buy  that  field.  "I  begin," 
he  said,  in  one  of  the  earliest  of  his  extant 
letters,  —  "I  begin  to  fix  my  eye  upon  one 
horizon."  He  would  be  a  poet,  because 
he  must.  He  would  not  be  a  surgeon,  be- 
cause he  must  not.  He  had  done  well  in 
his  studies,  we  are  told,  and  was  in  good 
repute  at  the  hospital,  whither  by  this 
time  he  had  gone;  but  a  voice  was  speak- 
ing within  him,  and  there  was  never  an 
hour  but  he  heard  it.  *'The  other  day, 
during  the  lecture,"  he  said,  "there  came 
a  sunbeam  into  the  room,  and  with  it  a 
whole  troop  of  creatures  floating  in  the 
ray;    and  I  was  off  with  them  to  Oberon 

^  How  largely  he  profited  by  his  study  of  Spenser,  Shake- 
speare, Milton,  and  other  poets,  especially  in  the  enrichment 
of  his  vocabulary,  is  shown  by  Mr.  E.  de  Selincourt  in  the 
notes  and  appendices  to  his  recent  admirable  edition  of  Keats's 
Poems.  The  subject  is  interesting,  and  is  treated  in  the  most 
painstaking  manner. 


200  FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

and  fairy -land."  "My  last  operation," 
he  tells  another  correspondent,  "was  the 
opening  of  a  man's  temporal  artery.  I  did 
it  with  the  utmost  nicety,  but  reflecting  on 
what  passed  through  my  mind  at  the  time, 
my  dexterity  seemed  a  miracle,  and  I  never 
took  up  the  lancet  again." 

It  was  a  bold  stroke, — no  prudent 
adviser  would  have  borne  him  out  in  it, 
—  to  forsake  everything  else  to  be  a  poet. 
But  never  was  a  luckier  one.  He  had 
but  four  or  five  years  to  live,  and  (a  com- 
fort indeed  to  think  of!)  he  did  not  waste 
them  in  making  ready  to  earn  a  living  he 
was  never  to  have.  It  was  a  plain  case  of 
losing  one's  life  to  find  it. 

Only  four  or  five  years,  but  with  what 
a  zest  he  lived  them !  Misgivings  no  doubt 
he  had,  enough  and  to  spare.  Now  and 
then,  to  use  his  own  words,  he  was  pretty 
well  "down  in  the  mouth."  "I  have  been 
in  such  a  state  of  mind,"  he  writes  to 
Haydon,  "as  to  read  over  my  lines  and 
hate  them.  I  am  one  that  'gathers  sam- 
phire, dreadful  trade '  —  the  Cliff  of  Poesy 
towers  above  me."  He  knew  also  the  can- 
ker of  pecuniary  difficulty  ("like  a  nettle 


A  RELISH  OF  KEATS  201 

leaf  or  two  in  your  bed,"  his  own  expres- 
sion is);  and  then,  when  he  was  but  be- 
ginning his  work,  there  fell  on  him  the 
stroke  of  a  mortal  disease,  recognized  as 
such  from  almost  the  first  moment.  But 
in  spite  of  all,  and  through  it  all,  what 
a  fire  he  kept  burning!  How  gloriously 
happy  he  often  was!  He  hungered  and 
thirsted  after  beauty,  and  he  had  the 
blessedness  that  rewards  such  a  craving. 
For  blessedness  (and  that  is  the  best  of  it) 
consists  perfectly  with  a  low  estate  and 
all  manner  of  outward  misfortune.  It  can 
do  without  gold,  and  even  without  health. 
As  for  resting  in  comforts  and  toys,  easi- 
ness and  fine  clothes,  a  great  aim,  if  it 
does  nothing  else  for  a  man,  will  at  least 
save  him  from  that  pitch  of  vulgarity. 
A  great  aim  is  of  itself  a  great  part  of  the 
true  riches.  As  Keats  said,  having  found  it 
out  early,  "our  prime  objects  are  a  refuge 
as  well  as  a  passion." 

Such  delight  as  the  right  men  must  al- 
ways take  in  some  of  his  letters!  —  espe- 
cially, perhaps,  some  of  the  earlier  ones, 
written  in  the  period  of  his  first  fervors  as 
a  reader.     He  had  never  been  a  bookish 


202  FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

boy  (and  no  very  serious  harm  done,  it 
may  be  —  for  himself,  at  any  rate,  he  was 
no  behever  in  precocity),  and  now,  when, 
he  fell  all  at  once  upon  the  great  poets,  it 
was  as  if  he  had  been  born  again.  What 
a  relish  he  has !  How  he  smacks  his  lips 
over  a  line  of  Shakespeare,  —  who  "has 
left  nothing  to  say  about  nothing  or  any- 
thing." Here  was  a  poet  who  read  the 
works  of  poets.  Possibly  if  he  had  lived  to 
be  old,  he  might  have  changed  his  prac- 
tice in  this  regard,  finding  his  own  works 
sufficient,  as  other  elderly  poets  have  before 
now  been  charged  with  doing.  As  it  is,  his 
raptures  make  one  think  again  and  again 
of  Hazlitt's  outburst,  "The  greatest  plea- 
sure in  life  is  that  of  reading,  while  we 
are  young;"  which,  if  it  does  not  hit  the 
white,  is  at  least  well  within  the  outer 
circle.^ 

His  method  was  unblushingly  epicu- 
rean. Like  a  bee  in  a  field  of  flowers,  he 
was  always  stopping  to  suck  the  sweet- 

*  At  this  very  time,  by-the-bye,  Hazlitt  was  lecturing,  and 
Keats,  after  hearing  him,  reports  to  his  brother  (February  14, 
1818),  "Hazlitt's  last  lecture  was  on  Thomson,  Cowper,  and 
Crabbe.  He  praised  Thomson  and  Cowper,  but  he  gave  Crabbe 
an  unmerciful  licking." 


A  RELISH  OF  KEATS  203 

ness  of  a  line.  For  that  very  purpose 
he  was  there.  The  happy  boy!  He  had 
found  out  what  books  were  made  for. 
For  a  second  time,  nay,  rather,  for  the  first 
time,  he  had  learned  to  read.  A  great  dis- 
covery !  —  old  as  the  hills  and  new  as  the 
morning.  But  new  or  old,  a  great  discov- 
ery. For  an  intellectual  youth  there  is 
none  to  match  it,  as  there  is  no  school- 
master to  teach  it.  And  with  what  a  gusto 
he  describes  the  process !  You  would  think 
he  had  found  Aladdin's  lamp.  His  fancy 
cannot  see  it  from  sides  enough;  as  a 
child  dances  about  a  new  toy,  and  can 
never  be  done  with  looking. 

"I  had  an  idea,"  he  says,  "that  a  man 
might  pass  a  very  pleasant  life  in  this 
manner.  Let  him  on  a  certain  day  read 
a  certain  page  of  full  poesy  or  distilled 
prose,  and  let  him  wander  with  it,  and 
muse  upon  it,  and  reflect  from  it,  and 
bring  home  to  it,  and  prophesy  upon  it, 
and  dream  upon  it:  until  it  becomes  stale. 
But  when  will  it  do  so  ?  Never.  When 
man  has  arrived  at  a  certain  ripeness 
in  intellect,  any  one  grand  and  spiritual 
passage    serves    him    as    a    starting-post 


204  FRIENDS    ON  THE    SHELF 

towards  all  'the  two-and-thirty  palaces.' 
How  happy  is  such  a  voyage  of  concep- 
tion, what  delicious  diligent  indolence!  A 
doze  upon  a  sofa  does  not  hinder  it,  and  a 
nap  upon  clover  engenders  ethereal  fin- 
ger-pointings; the  prattle  of  a  child  gives 
it  wings,  and  the  converse  of  middle-age 
a  strength  to  beat  them;  a  strain  of  music 
conducts  to  *an  odd  angle  of  the  Isle,' 
and  when  the  leaves  whisper,  it  puts  a 
girdle  round  the  earth." 

This  he  calls  a  "sparing  touch  of  noble 
books."  It  is  too  much  to  be  expected, 
of  course,  that  readers  in  general,  whose 
idea  of  intellectual  delights  is  of  a  new 
novel  every  other  day,  should  be  con- 
tented with  a  method  so  parsimonious. 
If  this  is  what  you  call  epicureanism,  they 
might  say,  pray  count  us  among  the  Stoics. 
And  for  all  that,  as  applied  to  Keats's 
own  practice,  "epicurean"  was  the  right 
word. 

What  he  would  have  been  at  forty  or 
fifty,  there  is  no  telling.  For  the  present 
he  was  not  much  concerned  with  whole 
poems  as  works  of  great  constructive  art. 
He  was  of  an  age  to  be   (what  Edward 


A  RELISH  OF  KEATS  205 

FitzGerald  is  said  to  have  always  been) 
"more  of  a  connoisseur  than  a  critic,  a 
taster  of  fragrant  essences,  an  inhaler  of 
subtle  aromas."  He  loved  beauty  as  at 
that  stage  he  mostly  found  it  (as  the  bee 
finds  sweetness),  in  the  individual  flower, 
thinking  far  more  of  that  than  of  the 
plant's  symmetrical  structure,  or  the  com- 
position of  the  landscape.  In  this  particu- 
lar he  resembled  Lamb,  who,  if  he  called 
himself  "an  author  by  fits,"  was  no  less 
truly  a  reader  by  fits.  "I  can  vehemently 
applaud,"  he  said  with  characteristic, 
half-true  self -depreciation,  "or  perversely 
stickle,  at  jjarts;  but  I  cannot  grasp  at  a 
whole." 

It  was  an  admission  of  defect  —  he 
meant  it  so;  but  it  is  no  slander  to  say 
that  lovers  of  poetry  are  in  general  of  sub- 
stantially the  same  mind.  Their  taste  is 
selective.  They  love  short  poems,  or  the 
beauties  of  long  ones.  Many  of  them  have 
confessed  as  much,  and  many  others  could 
do  no  less  were  they  called  into  the  box. 
Lowell,  whose  standing  as  a  critic  nobody 
questions,  though  some  may  be  bold 
enough,  or  "perverse"   enough,  now  the 


20G         FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

man  is  dead,  to  rule  him  out  of  the  class 
of  poets,  bids  us  remember  how  few  long 
poems  will  bear  consecutive  reading.  "For 
my  part,"  he  says,  "I  know  of  but  one, 
—  the '  Odyssey.' "  And  Samuel  Johnson, 
who,  great  critic  or  not,  had  "a  good  deal 
of  literature,"  told  Boswell,  "that  from 
his  earliest  years  he  loved  to  read  poetry, 
but  hardly  ever  read  any  poem  to  an  end." 
The  boy  Keats,  then,  was  not  so  utterly 
out  of  the  way,  at  all  events  he  was  not 
without  the  support  of  good  company,  in 
taking  for  his  own  the  motto  of  Ariel,  — 

"  Where  the  bee  sucks,  there  suck  I. " 

And  a  good  time  he  had  of  it;  reading 
and  idling,  reading  and  writing,  not  too 
much  in  a  hurry,  no  busier  than  a  bee, 
following  his  bent,  finding  Shakespeare 
and  the  "Paradise  Lost"  every  day  greater 
wonders  to  him;  looking  upon  fine  phrases 
like  a  lover;  more  and  more  convinced 
that  "fine  writing,  next  to  fine  doing,  is 
the  top  thing  in  the  world." 

"Next  to  fine  doing,"  he  said, — and 
meant  it;  for  his  life  and  his  own  doings 
chimed   with    the   word.      Nor   does   the 


A  RELISH  OF  KEATS  207 

word,  even  as  a  verbal  confession  of  faith, 
stand  alone.  On  the  testimony  of  his 
friends,  and  on  the  testimony  of  his  letters, 
Keats  was  no  selfish  weakling,  no  puny 
luxuriator  in  his  own  emotions,  no  mere 
hectic  taster  and  maker  of  phrases.  He 
worshiped  beauty;  he  was  born  a  poet, 
and  rightly  enough  he  followed  his  genius ; 
but  he  was  born  also  affectionate  and 
generous;  in  his  nature  there  was  much 
of  that  glorious  something  which  we  call 
chivalry;  and  he  knew  as  well  as  all  the 
preachers  could  tell  him  that  in  any  true 
assize  high  conduct  must  always  bear 
away  the  palm.  No  more  than  the  apostle 
of  old  had  he  any  "poor  vanity  that  works 
of  genius  were  the  first  things.  No!  for 
that  sort  of  probity  and  disinterestedness 
which  such  men  as  Bailey  possess  does 
hold  and  grasp  the  tiptop  of  any  spiritual 
honors  that  can  be  paid  to  anything  in  this 
world."  Truly  said,  of  this  world  or  any 
other;  for  many  things  may  be  great,  but 
the  greatest  of  all  is  charity. 

It  might  almost  have  been  expected  that 
genius  so  sudden  in  its  flowering,  so  amaz- 
ingly exceptional,  as  Keats's,  one  of  the 


208         FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

wonders  of  human  history,  would  be  at- 
tended by  some  strain  of  disease,  some 
taint,  more  or  less  pronounced,  of  mental 
or  moral  unsoundness.  It  is  the  more  to 
be  rejoiced  in,  therefore,  that  his  nature, 
mental,  moral,  and  physical  (except  for 
the  tuberculosis  which  he  doubtless  con- 
tracted from  his  mother,  over  whom,  in 
her  last  illness,  he,  a  boy  of  fifteen,  watched 
with  all  a  son's  and  daughter's  faithful- 
ness), was  to  all  appearance  eminently 
sane  and  normal.  As  a  boy,  undersized 
though  he  was,  he  would  always  be  fight- 
ing (which  is  normal,  surely),  and  as  a 
man  he  showed  habitually,  with  one  dis- 
tressing exception,  a  manly,  self-respecting 
spirit. 

The  single  exception  has  to  do  with  his 
passion  for  Fanny  Brawne,  concerning 
which  it  may  be  enough  to  say  that  when 
a  man  is  head  over  ears  in  love  with  a 
pretty  girl,  or  a  girl  whom  he  thinks 
pretty,  and  is  by  her,  or  by  some  perver- 
sity of  Fate,  put  off,  he  is  never  sane.  The 
letters  that  Keats  wrote  to  his  inamorata 
may  have  been,  as  his  friendly  critic  says, 
"the   letters   of   a   surgeon's  apprentice." 


A  RELISH  OF  KEATS  209 

For  ourselves  we  will  take  the  critic's 
word  for  it.  We  have  never  read  them 
(in  our  opinion  it  was  indecent  or  worse 
to  print  them),  nor  should  we  feel  sure 
of  our  ability  to  tell  in  what  respect  the 
love  letters  of  a  young  doctor  might  be 
expected  to  differ  from  those  of  a  young 
schoolmaster  or  a  young  duke  of  the  realm. 
To  be  crazy  is  to  be  crazy.  Enough  to 
say  that  they  were  not  the  letters  of  the 
poet  Keats.  Alas,  alas!  What  a  tragedy 
is  human  life!  What  a  weak  and  silly 
thing  is  the  human  heart!  A  man  sees  a 
girl's  face,  and  behold,  he  is  no  longer  a 
reasonable  being;  his  peace  of  mind  is 
gone,  his  work  hindered,  his  day  shortened, 
his  fame  tarnished,  his  name  a  laughing- 
stock. It  is  that  which  hath  been,  and  it 
is  that  which  shall  be.  As  was  said  of  old, 
so  one  may  feel  like  saying  still,  "A  man 
hath  no  preeminence  above  a  beast;  for 
all  is  vanity." 

And  for  all  that,  considering  Keats's 
genius,  its  early  development  and  its  mi- 
raculous quality,  and  comparing  him  with 
men  of  his  own  kind,  we  must  account 
him   on    the   whole    a    man    surprisingly 


210         FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHEEF 

well-balanced  and  sane.  Call  the  roll  of 
his  famous  poetic  contemporaries,  and 
few  of  them  will  be  found  saner.  Good 
Archdeacon  Bailey,  who  had  abundant 
opportunity  to  know,  said  that  common 
sense  was  "a  conspicuous  part  of  his 
character."  Of  how  many  of  the  others 
would  it  ever  have  occurred  to  any  one 
to  say  the  like  ? 

He  seems  not  to  have  been  either 
crotchety  or  boastful,  though  he  believed 
in  aiming  high,  and  made  no  scruple  of 
professing,  in  so  many  words,  that  he 
"  would  rather  fail  than  not  be  among  the 
greatest."  Born  fighter  that  he  was, born, 
too,  of  the  genus  irritabile  vatum  ("when 
I  have  any  little  vexation,"  he  once  wrote, 
with  Lamb-like  exaggeration,  "  it  grows 
in  five  minutes  into  a  theme  for  Sopho- 
cles"), he  loved  peace,  and  in  the  Biblical 
phrase  pursued  it,  for  which  Mr.  Arnold, 
it  is  pleasant  to  see,  awards  him  full 
credit;  but  he  was  not  to  be  trodden  upon, 
he  held  the  popular  judgment  of  poetry 
in  something  like  contempt  (as  all  poets 
do,  it  is  to  be  presumed),  and  he  would  not 
be  crowded  too  hard  even  by  the  chiefest 


A  RELISH   OF  KEATS  211 

of  his  brethren.  The  most  thoroughgoing 
Wordsworth ian  must  read  with  amuse- 
ment, if  not  with  temptations  to  applause, 
the  few  clever  sentences  in  which  the 
youthful  aspirant  for  poetic  honors,  in  one 
of  his  letters,  hits  off  some  of  that  great 
man's  foibles.  He  has  no  thought  of  deny- 
ing Wordsworth's  grandeur,  he  declares; 
but  not  for  the  sake  of  a  few  fine  imagi- 
native or  domestic  passages  will  he  "be 
bullied  into  a  certain  philosophy  engen- 
dered in  the  whims  of  an  egoist."  "Every 
man,"  he  goes  on,  "has  his  speculations, 
but  every  man  does  not  brood  and  pea- 
cock over  them  till  he  makes  a  false  coin- 
age and  deceives  himself.  .  .  .  We  hate 
poetry  that  has  a  palpable  design  upon 
us,  and,  if  we  do  not  agree,  seems  to  put 
its  hand  into  its  breeches  pocket.  Poetry 
should  be  great  and  unobtrusive,  a  thing 
which  enters  into  one's  soul,  and  does  not 
startle  it  or  amaze  it  with  itself  —  but 
with  its  subject.  How  beautiful  are  the 
retired  flowers !  —  how  would  they  lose 
their  beauty  were  they  to  throng  into  the 
highway,  crying  out,  'Admire  me,  I  am  a 
violet!   Dote  upon  me,  I  am  a  primrose! ' " 


212         FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

To  another  correspondent  he  expresses 
a  fear  that  Wordsworth  has  gone  away 
from  town  "rather  huffed"  about  some- 
thing or  other,  the  nature  of  which  does 
not  precisely  appear;  but  adds  that  he 
ought  not  to  expect  but  that  every  man 
of  worth  should  be  "as  proud  as  him- 
self;" a  remark  concerning  which  we 
are  bound  to  acknowledge,  loyal  Words- 
worthians  as  within  reason  we  esteem 
ourselves,  that  we  rather  like  the  sound 
of  it. 

An  artist  cannot  well  be  without  some 
of  the  defects  —  or  what  more  steady- 
going,  lower-flying  people  are  wont  to 
account  the  defects  —  that  go  naturally, 
if  not  of  necessity,  with  the  artistic  tem- 
perament. For  one  thing,  he  must  work 
more  or'  less  by  fits  and  starts.  Poems  are 
not  to  be  made — unless  it  be  by  a  Southey 
—  as  a  shoemaker  makes  shoes,  so  many 
strokes  to  the  minute.  It  is  a  wonder  how 
much  Keats  accomplished  in  his  few  years, 
and  this  even  if  we  take  no  reckoning  of 
his  experiments  and  failures  ;  but  there 
were  times,  of  course,  when  he  could  do 
nothing,  and  then,  equally  of  course,  he 


A  RELISH  OF  KEATS  213 

could  invent  the  prettiest  kind  of  excuses 
for  himself,  excuses  that  were  themselves 
hardly  less  than  works  of  genius.  At  such 
a  minute  he  would  say,  for  instance, 
"Neither  Poetry,  nor  Ambition,  nor  Love 
have  any  alertness  of  countenance  as  they 
pass  by  me;  they  seem  rather  like  figures 
on  a  Greek  vase."  Or,  if  the  beauty  of 
the  morning  operated  upon  a  sense  of 
idleness,  he  would  declare  it  "more  noble 
to  sit  like  Jove  than  to  fly  like  Mercury." 
"Let  us  open  our  leaves  like  a  flower,"  he 
would  say,  "and  be  passive  and  receptive; 
budding  patiently  under  the  eye  of  Apollo 
and  taking  hints  from  every  noble  insect 
that  favors  us  with  a  visit.  ...  I  have 
not  read  any  books  —  the  Morning  said 
I  was  right  —  I  had  no  idea  but  of  the 
Morning,  and  the  Thrush  said  I  was  right 
—  seeming  to  say,  — 

"  '  O  fret  not  after  knowledge  —  I  have  none, 

And  yet  my  song  comes  native  with  the  warmth, 
O  fret  not  after  knowledge  —  I  have  none. 
And  yet  the  Evening  listens.'  " 

Not  that  he  was  ever  foolish  enough  to 
despise  knowledge,  or  trust  overmuch  to 
impulses   "from  a  vernal  wood,"  as   if  a 


214  FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

poet  could  subsist  on  inspiration.  A  few 
weeks  after  the  date  of  the  letter  just 
quoted,  a  letter  which  he  himself  quali- 
fied before  he  was  done  as  "a  mere  so- 
phistication," we  find  him  renouncing  a 
proposed  pleasure  trip.  There  is  but  one 
thing  to  prevent  his  going,  he  tells  his 
correspondent.  "I  know  nothing,"  he 
says,  "  I  have  read  nothing,  and  I  mean  to 
follow  Solomon's  directions,  *Get  learn- 
ing, get  understanding.'  I  find  earlier  days 
are  gone  by — I  find  that  I  can  have  no 
enjoyment  in  the  world  but  continual 
drinking  of  knowledge.  .  .  .  There  is  but 
one  way  for  me.  The  road  lies  through 
application,  study,  and  thought.  I  will 
pursue  it." 

But  as  we  counted  it  fortunate  that  he 
had  already  had  the  courage  to  forsake 
everything  else  for  the  pursuit  of  poetry, 
so  we  must  be  thankful  that  now,  feel- 
ing his  educational  deficiencies,  he  did  not 
do  what  nine  professors  out  of  ten,  had 
he  had  the  ill-fortune  to  consult  them, 
would  —  very  properly,  no  doubt  —  have 
advised  him  to  do;  that  is  to  say,  cease 
production  for  the  time  being  and  devote 


A  RELISH  OF  KEATS  215 

himself  to  study.  That  would  have  been 
a  loss  irreparable.  His  sun  was  so  soon 
to  go  down !  A  mercy  it  was  that  he  made 
hay  while  it  shone. 

For  much  of  the  hay  that  he  made  was 
as  good  as  the  sun  ever  shone  on.  That 
it  was  a  short  season's  crop  may  pass 
unsaid.  It  is  not  within  the  possibilities 
of  human  nature,  however  miraculously 
endowed,  to  be  mature  at  twenty-five. 
Enough,  surely,  if  at  that  age  a  man  has 
done  a  good  bit  of  work  of  the  rarest, 
divinest  quality,  work  that,  within  its  range 
and  scope,  the  greatest  and  ripest  genius 
could  never  dream  of  bettering.  That  is 
Keats's  glory.  So  much  as  that  one  need 
not  be  either  a  poet  or  a  critic  to  affirm; 
the  critics  and  poets  have  agreed  to  affirm 
it  for  us.  K  Tennyson  said,  as  reported, 
that  "Keats,  with  his  high  spiritual  vision, 
would  have  been,  if  he  had  lived,  the  great- 
est of  us  all;  there  is  something  magical 
and  of  the  innermost  soul  of  poetry  in 
almost  everything  which  he  wrote;  "  and 
if  Arnold  put  him,  in  two  words,  "with 
Shakespeare,"  why,  then,  for  the  present, 
at  least,  the  case  is  judged,  and  we  who 


216         FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

are  neither  poets  nor  critics,  but  only 
tasters  and  relishers,  can  have  no  call  to 
argue  it. 

So  much  being  admitted,  however,  it  is 
not  to  be  assumed  that  here  is  an  end 
of  things.  One  may  still  like  to  talk  a 
little.  Hearing  him  praised,  one  may  still 
say,— 

"  '  'T  is  so,  't  is  true,' 
And  to  the  most  of  praise  add  something  more." 

Life  would  be  a  dull  affair  for  the  smaller 
men  if  comment  and  side  remark  were 
forever  debarred  as  soon  as  the  bigwigs 
had  settled  the  main  contention. 

Leaving  on  one  side,  then,  the  odes  and 
other  pieces  which  by  universal  consent 
are  perfect,  or  as  nearly  so  as  consists  with 
human  frailty,^  let  us  content  ourselves 
with  intimating  the  profit  which  readers 
of  a  proper  youthfulness  and  other  need- 
ful, not    over-critical,   qualifications    may 

'  We  speak  thus  without  forgetting  that  an  American  poet 
once  wrote  (what  a  reputable  American  periodical  printed)  a 
revised  version  of  one  of  the  odes,  just  to  show  how  easily  Keats 
could  be  improved  upon.  The  good  man  might  have  been,  though 
we  believe  he  was  not,  brother  to  the  one  of  whom  we  have  all 
heard,  who  declared  his  opinion  that  there  weren't  ten  men  in 
Boston  who  could  have  written  Shakespeare's  plays. 


A  RELISH  OF  KEATS  217 

derive  from  some  of  the  other  and  longer 
poems,  which  by  the  same  common  con- 
sent, as  well  as  by  the  acknowledgment 
of  the  man  who  wrote  them,  are  in  every 
sense  imperfect. 

Indeed,  there  are  few  things  in  Keats's 
letters  more  interesting  in  themselves,  or 
more  characteristic  of  their  author,  than 
his  apologies  for  these  same  longer  pieces, 
especially  for  "Endymion." 

"  Why  endeavor  after  a  long  poem  ?  " 
he  has  heard  some  one  ask.  And  this  is 
his  answer :  — 

"Do  not  the  lovers  of  poetry  like  to 
have  a  little  region  to  wander  in,  where 
they  may  pick  and  choose,  and  in  which 
the  images  are  so  numerous  that  many 
are  forgotten  and  found  new  in  a  second 
reading;  which  may  be  food  for  a  week's 
stroll  in  the  summer.?  Do  not  they  like 
this  better  than  what  they  can  read  through 
before  Mrs.  Williams  comes  downstairs  ?  a 
morning  work  at  most." 

Evidently  his  "lovers  of  poetry"  are  of 
the  tribe  of  those  whose  practice  we  have 
heard  him  describing  as  "a  sparing  touch 
of  noble  books;"  lovers  rather  than  critics 


218         FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

or  students ;  browsers  and  ruminators ;  not 
determined  upon  devouring  whole  forests, 
or  even  entire  trees,  but  content  with  get- 
ting here  and  there  the  goodness  of  a  leaf 
or  the  sweetness  of  a  blossom.  He  fore- 
sees that  "Endymion"  is  doomed  to  be 
in  one  way  a  failure;  he  knows  that  his 
mind  at  present,  in  its  nonage,  is  "like 
a  pack  of  scattered  cards."  The  words 
are  his  own.  Yet  he  confides  that  there 
will  be  poetry  in  his  long  poem,  and  that 
the  right  spirits  will  find  it.  And  so  they 
do.  He  has  touched  their  disposition  to 
a  nicety.  They  love  to  "wander  in  it." 
They  may  never  have  tried  very  hard  to 
follow  the  story;  they  may  not  care  to 
read  any  special  student's  supposed  dis- 
coveries as  to  just  how  this  part  of  the 
action  is  related  to  that  or  the  other.  But 
they  like  the  poetry.  They  never  read  the 
poem,  or  read  in  it,  without  finding  some. 
They  do  not  wish  it  shorter,  nor  are  they 
conscious  of  any  very  sharp  regret  that 
it  is  not  better.  Wisely  or  unwisely,  they 
accept  it  as  it  is,  and  are  thankful  that  the 
young  man  wrote  it,  and,  having  written 
it,  took  nobody's  advice  against  printing 


A   RELISH  OF  KEATS  219 

it.  If  they  read  in  it,  as  we  say,  wliy,  that 
is  mostly  what  they  do  with  the  "Fairy 
Queen"  and  "Paradise  Lost."  It  may  be 
the  fault  of  the  poem,  or  it  may  be  the 
fault  of  the  reader;  or  it  may  be  nobody's 
fault. 

In  the  case  of  "Endymion,"  indeed,  it 
requires  no  exceptional  acumen  to  perceive 
that  the  work  hangs  feebly  together,  that 
its  construction,  its  architectonic,  if  that 
be  the  word,  is  defective  past  all  mend- 
ing. "Utterly  incoherent,"  is  Mr.  Arnold's 
dictum,  and  for  ourselves  we  have  no  in- 
clination to  dispute  him.  Our  fault  or  the 
poet's,  we  have  always  found  it  so.  But 
like  Mr.  Arnold,  we  feel  the  breath  of 
genius  blowing  through  it,  and  therefore, 
as  we  say,  we  find  in  it  not  infrequently  an 
hour  of  good  reading. 

Such  reading,  it  has  sometimes  seemed 
to  us  (and  the  poet's  apology,  now  we 
think  of  it,  comes  to  much  the  same 
thing),  is  like  walking  in  a  forest,  where 
we  cannot  see  the  wood  for  the  trees. 
All  about  us  they  stand,  dwindling  away 
and  away  as  we  look,  till,  whichever  way 
we    turn,    there    is    no    looking    farther. 


220         FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

Above  our  heads  is  a  canopy  of  interlac- 
ing branches,  — 

"  overwove 
By  many  a  summer's  silent  fingering,"  — 

through  which,  densely  as  it  is  woven, 
steals  here  and  there  a  sunbeam  to  play 
upon  the  carpet  underneath.  In  such  a 
place  we  know  little  and  care  less  whither 
we  may  be  going.  Standing  still  is  a  good 
progress.  Not  a  step  but  something  offers 
itself,  —  a  flower,  a  bed  of  moss,  a  trail- 
ing, berry-covered  vine,  a  tuft  of  ferns.  A 
brook  talks  to  us,  a  bird  sings  to  us,  a 
vista  invites  us,  a  leafy  spray,  as  we  brush 
against  it,  whispers  of  beauty  and  the 
summer.  These,  and  trifles  like  these, 
are  what  we  could  specify.  All  of  them 
together  do  not  make  the  forest,  yet  the 
least  of  them  is  not  only  part  of  the  for- 
est, but  is  what  it  is  because  of  the  forest. 
The  soul  of  the  forest  speaks  through  it. 
How  incomparably  significant  becomes  of 
a  sudden  every  common  sound.  If  two 
branches  but  rub  together,  we  must  stop 
and  listen.  If  a  thrush  whistles,  we  could 
stand  forever  to  hear  it.  Not  a  sight  or 
sound  of  them  all  would  mean  the  same, 


A  RELISH  OF  KEATS  221 

or  anything  like  the  same,  if  it  were  en- 
countered in  the  open  and  by  itself.  It  is 
the  old  lesson.  The  sparrow's  note  must 
come  from  the  alder  bough,  the  shell  must 
be  seen  on  the  beach  with  the  tide  rippling 
over  it.  • 

And  the  magical  verse,  if  it  is  to  exer- 
cise its  full  charm,  must  be  found,  not  in 
a  book  of  extracts,  nor  as  a  fragment,  but 
at  home  in  its  native  surroundings.  It 
must  have  been  born  in  the  poem,  and  we 
must  discover  it  there!  The  poem  which 
has  made  the  verse  must  also  have  put 
us  into  the  mood  to  receive  it.  How  often 
have  all  readers  found  this  true  by  its  op- 
posite. How  often  a  line  quoted  is  a  line 
from  which  the  glory  seems  to  have  de- 
parted, a  line  depaysel  —  as  the  tree,  the 
bird,  the  leaf,  if  we  see  them  in  the  open 
country  and  in  the  mood  of  the  open  coun- 
try, can  never  be  the  same  as  if  we  saw 
them  in  the  forest  and  in  the  mood  which 
the  forest  induces. 

We  think,  then,  that  the  poet's  plea  is 
sound;  that  his  long  poem,  whatever  its 
shortcomings,  is  abundantly  justified  as  a 
good  place  to  wander  about  in;  that  there 


222         FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

is  poetry  (one  of  the  rare  things  of  the 
world)  in  it  which  never  would  have  been 
produced  elsewhere,  and  which,  now  that 
it  has  been  produced,  can  only  be  appre- 
ciated when  read,  as  scientific  men  say, 
in  situ.  To  transfer  its  beauties  to  a  com- 
monplace book  would  be  like  putting  roses 
into  a  herbarium,  or,  more  justly,  perhaps, 
like  setting  a  seashell  on  a  parlor  mantel. 

In  the  long  poem,  too,  as  in  the  forest, 
though  we  were  near  forgetting  to  speak 
of  it,  there  is  always  the  chance  of  finding 
something  unexpected;  a  line,  an  epithet, 
an  image,  that  seems  to  have  come  into 
being  since  we  were  last  here.  Every  peru- 
sal is  thus  a  kind  of  voyage  of  discovery. 
It  is  as  if  the  season  had  changed.  New 
flowers  have  blossomed,  new  birds  have 
come  from  the  South,  and  the  wood  is  a 
new  place. 

In  all  the  work  of  genius,  as  we  began 
by  saying,  there  is  no  small  part  that  seems 
to  come  from  almost  anywhere  rather  than 
from  the  Qiind  and  intention  of  the  writer. 
And  the  more  genius,  we  must  believe,  the 
more  of  this  appearance  of  what  is  known 
(or  unknown)  as  inspiration.     Yet,  in  the 


A  RELISH  OF  KEATS  223 

case  of  Keats,  a  man  of  genius  all  com- 
pact, one  has  only  to  read  his  letters  to 
see  (and  glad  we  must  be  to  see  it)  that, 
for  all  his  youthfulness  and  comparatively 
slight  acquaintance  with  books,  he  was 
pretty  well  aware  of  himself,  having  withal 
a  kind  of  philosophy  of  life  and  many 
shrewd  ideas  concerning  the  poetic  art. 
His  gift  was  no  external,  detachable  thing, 
an  influence  of  which  he  could  give  no 
account,  and  over  which  he  had  no  con- 
trol, like,  shall  we  say,  the  inscrutable, 
uncanny,  unrelated  mathematical  faculty 
of  a  Zerah  Colburn,  a  thing  by  itself,  sig- 
nificant of  no  general  capacity  on  the  part 
of  its  possessor.  The  man  himself  was  a 
genius. 

And  being  such,  he  was  safest  when  he 
followed  his  own  leadings.  Wlien  he 
humbled  himself  to  write  what  he  hoped 
men  would  pay  for,  as,  under  pressure  of 
his  brother's  and  sister's  need,  he  per- 
suaded himself  he  might  do  ("the  very 
corn  which  is  now  so  beautiful,  as  if  it 
had  only  took  to  ripening  yesterday,  is 
for  the  market;  so,  why  should  I  be  deli- 
cate.^"), he  was  mostly  wasting  his  time. 


224         FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

*'  I  have  great  hope  of  success,"  he  writes, 
"because  I  make  use  of  my  judgment 
more  deliberately  than  I  have  yet  done." 
It  was  a  vain  dependence.  "  Live  and 
learn,"  says  the  proverb.  And,  prose  men 
or  poets,  the  brightest  must  mind  the  les- 
son. But  Keats,  alas!  could  not  live.  He 
was  "born  for  death,"  and  was  already 
marked.  His  work,  the  best  of  it,  was 
already  finished.  Racked  and  broken,  de- 
voured by  the  very  madness  of  passion 
and  wasting  away  with  incurable  disease, 
his  tale  henceforth  is  pure  tragedy.  If  his 
passion  was  a  weakness,  —  and  no  doubt 
it  was,  —  to  colder-blooded  men  a  state  of 
mind  incredible,  and  to  Pharisees  and 
fools  a  thing  to  mock  at,  —  so  let  us  call 
it,  and  there  be  done.  It  was  past  cure, 
so  much  is  certain.  Here  and  there  in  his 
letters  there  are  still  gleams  of  brightness, 
sad  touches  of  pleasantry.  To  his  sister, 
about  whose  health  he  is  continually  in 
a  fever,  lest  she  should  be  going  as  his 
mother  and  his  brother  Tom  have  gone 
(and  he  himself  far  on  the  road),  he  is 
always  a  little  improved,  always  mak- 
ing the    most   of    the   doctor's    words   of 


A  RELISH  OF  KEATS  225 

encouragement ;  but  between  times,  to  some 
other  correspondent,  he  shows  for  a  mo- 
ment the  plague  that  is  consuming  his  hfe. 
It  is  heart-breaking  to  hear  him.  "  If  I  had 
any  chance  of  recovery,  this  passion  would 
kill  me."  He  cannot  name  the  one  of 
whom  he  is  night  and  day  thinking.  "I 
am  afraid  to  write  to  her  —  to  receive  a 
letter  from  her  —  to  see  her  handwriting 
would  break  my  heart."  Even  to  see  her 
name  written  would  be  more  than  he  could 
bear.  *'Oh,  Brown,  I  have  coals  of  fire 
in  my  breast.  It  surprises  me  that  the 
human  heart  is  capable  of  containing  and 
bearing  so  much  misery." 

And  strange  it  is  how  cruel  a  price  a 
man  can  be  made  to  pay  for  what,  at  the 
worst,  is  only  a  piece  of  natural  foolish- 
ness. 

"  Well  and  wisely  said  the  Greek, 
Be  thou  faithful,  but  not  fond; 
To  the  altar's  foot  thy  fellow  seek. 
The  Furies  wait  beyond." 

Never  man  found  this  truer  than  Keats. 

There  is  but  one  letter  more,  —  dated 
a  month  later,  and  addressed  to  the  same 
friend.     This  time  the  dying  man  knows 


226         FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

that  he  is  taking  leave,  though  he  still 
quotes  a  doctor's  soothing  diagnosis.  He 
is  bringing  his  philosophy  to  bear,  he  says; 
if  he  recovers,  he  will  do  thus  and  so;  but 
if  not,  all  his  faults  will  be  forgiven.  And 
then:  "Write  to  George  [his  brother]  as 
soon  as  you  receive  this,  and  tell  him  how 
I  am,  as  far  as  you  can  guess ;  and  also  a 
note  to  my  sister,  who  walks  about  my 
imagination  like  a  ghost,  she  is  so  like 
Tom.  I  can  scarcely  bid  you  good-bye, 
even  in  a  letter.  I  always  made  an  awk- 
ward bow.    God  bless  you!" 

How  wasteful  is  Nature !  Once  or  twice 
in  an  age,  one  man  out  of  millions,  she 
brings  forth  a  poet ;  and  then,  while  his 
powers  are  still  budding,  she  sends  on 
them  a  sudden  blight,  and  anon  cuts  him 
down.  Wasteful,  we  say.  But  who  can 
tell  ?  Perhaps  she  also,  like  the  rest  of  us, 
is  doing  what  she  can,  and,  like  the  rest 
of  us,  is  disappointed  when  she  fails. 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


ANATOLE     FRANCE 

M.  Anatole  France  is  a  writer  who  is 
continually  saying  something.  His  thought 
is  always  breaking  into  bloom.  He  is  not 
one  of  those  who,  on  the  ground  of  weight- 
iness  of  matter,  or  other  supposed  excel- 
lence, have  taken  out  a  license  to  be  dull. 
All  his  pages  have  light  in  them.  His  read- 
ers not  only  know  in  which  direction  they 
are  going,  —  a  great  comfort,  not  always 
vouchsafed  to  such  travelers,  —  but  are 
made  to  enjoy  the  journey,  having  a  thou- 
sand sights  to  look  at  by  the  way.  It  is 
an  author's  business,  he  considers,  to  make 
his  truth  beautiful;  and  nothing  is  beauti- 
ful but  what  is  easy.  An  artist  who  knows 
his  trade  will  "not  so  much  exact  attention 
as  surprise  it." 

It  sounds  like  a  good  creed;  and  the 
style  of  his  writing  answ^ers  to  it.  Its  qual- 
ities are  the  classical  French  qualities, 
—  neatness,  precision,  ease,  moderation, 
lightness  of  touch,  lucidity.    In  sum,  it  is 


230         FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

such  a  style  as  comes  of  good  breed- 
ing. He  is  clever  without  being  smart, 
and  pointed  without  emphasis.  As  for 
that  dreadful  something  which  goes  by 
the  name  of  rhetoric,  you  may  search 
his  twenty-odd  volumes  through  without 
finding  trace  of  it.  His  method  is  old- 
fashioned,  his  masters  are  the  old  mas- 
ters. Brilliancy,  surprise,  felicities,  origi- 
nalities, —  yes,  indeed,  he  has  all  these 
and  more,  but  he  knows  how  to  wear 
them  They  are  all  natural  to  him.  "Ele- 
gant, facile,  rapid,"  he  says;  "there  you 
have  the  perfect  politeness  of  a  writer." 
Obscurity,  difficulty,  is  to  his  way  of 
thinking  but  a  kind  of  bad  manners. 

He  was  born  to  enjoy  beautiful  things, 
one  would  say;  elected  before  the  cradle  to 
a  life  of  scholastic  quietness  and  leisure: 
a  dilettante  and  a  saunterer,  loving  old 
streets,  old  shops,  old  books,  the  old  litera- 
tures, fond  of  out-of-the-way  and  useless 
learning,  the  very  type  and  pattern  of 
an  aimless  reader  and  dreamer.  And  so, 
to  take  his  word  for  it,  he  appears  to 
have  begun.  Those  were  his  best  days. 
Then  he  was  most  himself.    So,  in  certain 


ANATOLE    FRANCE  231 

moods,  at  least,  it  seems  to  him  now. 
Of  that  time  he  is  thinking  when  he  says, 
"I  Hved  happy  years  without  writing.  I 
led  a  contemplative  and  solitary  life,  the 
memory  of  which  is  still  infinitely  sweet 
to  me.  Then,  as  I  studied  nothing,  I 
learned  much.  In  fact,  it  is  in  strolling 
that  one  makes  beautiful  intellectual  and 
moral  discoveries." 

The  old  book-stalls  on  the  Paris  quays, 
—  one  wonders  how  many  scores  of  times 
he  has  an  affectionate  word  to  say  for 
them  in  his  various  books.  Even  in  one 
of  the  earlier  essays  of  "  La  Vie  Litteraire  '* 
he  apologizes  for  what  is  already  becom- 
ing a  frequent  reference.  "Let  me  tell 
you,"  he  breaks  out,  "that  I  can  never 
pass  over  these  quays  without  experi- 
encing a  trouble  full  of  joy  and  sadness, 
because  I  was  born  here,  because  I  spent 
my  childhood  here,  and  because  the  fa- 
miliar faces  that  I  saw  here  formerly  are 
now  forever  vanished.  I  say  this  in  spite 
of  myself,  from  a  habit  of  saying  simply 
what  I  think,  about  that  of  which  I  think. 
One  is  never  quite  sincere  without  being 
a  little  wearisome.  But  I  have  a  hope  that. 


232         FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

if  I  speak  of  myself,  those  who  listen  to 
me  will  think  only  of  themselves;  so  that 
I  shall  please  them  while  pleasing  myself. 
I  was  brought  up  on  this  quay  in  the 
midst  of  books,  by  humble  and  simple 
people,  of  whose  memory  I  am  the  only 
guardian.  When  I  am  gone  they  will  be  as 
if  they  had  never  been.  My  soul  is  all 
full  of  their  relics." 

He  runs  a  risk  of  being  wearisome,  he 
says.  But  that  is  merely  a  grace-note  of 
French  politeness,  to  be  taken  as  it  is 
meant,  and  answered  after  its  kind.  In- 
deed, he  knows  better.  It  was  he  who  said 
of  Renan  that  his  most  charming  book 
was  his  little  volume  of  youthful  remi- 
niscence, because  he  had  put  most  of  him- 
self into  it.  And  of  M.  Anatole  France  it 
is  equally  true  that  although  he  has  an 
abundance  of  ideas,  and  loves  not  only  his 
own  past  but  the  past  of  the  world,  — 
especially  of  all  mystics,  heretics,  skeptics, 
enthusiasts,  and  saints,  —  yet  he  never 
comes  quite  so  close  to  his  reader  as  when 
his  talk  grows  most  intimate.  It  is  what 
we  who  read  are  always  after,  the  man 
behind  the  pen.    If  he  will  really  tell  us 


ANATOLE    FRANCE  233 

about  himself,  about  his  inner,  true  self, 
which  we  blindly  feel  must  be  somehow 
very  like  another  self,  more  interesting  still, 
with  which  we  seldom  succeed  in  coming 
face  to  face,  although,  according  to  the 
accepted  theory  of  things,  it  is,  or  ought 
to  be,  our  nearest  neighbor,  —  if  he  will 
really  tell  us  something,  little  matter  what, 
that  is  actually  true  about  himself,  we 
will  sit  up  till  morning  to  listen  to  him. 
It  seems  an  easy  way  to  be  interesting, 
does  it  not  ?  And  so  indeed  it  is,  for  the 
right  man  ;  for  the  really  fine  things  are 
always  easy,  —  if  one  can  do  them  at 
all. 

There  intrudes  the  doubt;  for  if  suc- 
cess in  personal  reminiscence  is  easy,  fail- 
ure is  ten  times  easier.  Of  course  a  man 
must  have  taste,  an  innate  or  well-bred 
sense  of  the  fitness  of  things;  and  so  a 
brook  must  have  banks,  to  save  it  from 
degeneration  and  loss.  But  what  if  the 
stream  itself  be  muddy,  if  it  have  no  move- 
ment, no  sparkle,  no  variety,  if  it  do  not 
by  turns  ripple  over  sunny  shallows,  loiter 
in  comfortable  eddies,  and  deepen  and 
darken  in  dream-inviting  pools  ?   Or  what 


234         FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

if  the  banks  be  straight-cut  and  formal, 
till  what  should  have  been  a  brook  is  little 
better  than  a  ditch  ?  What  if  taste  has 
become  propriety,  and  propriety  has  hard- 
ened into  primness,  and  the  writing  or  the 
talk  is  without  the  breath  of  life?  Yes, 
success  is  easy,  and  it  is  also  impossible. 
As  the  art  of  man  never  made  a  mountain 
brook,  so  instruction  never  by  itself  made 
a  writer.  The  rain  must  fall  from  heaven, 
and  readability  (and  hearability  likewise, 
since  writing  and  talking  are  but  two 
forms  of  the  one  thing)  must  come  from 
the  same  source,  or,  as  Emerson  said,  by 
nature. 

If  a  man  is  to  disclose  himself,  he  must 
first  have  known  something  about  him- 
self, a  pitch  of  intelligence  by  no  means 
to  be  taken  for  granted;  he  must  be  one 
of  the  relatively  few  who  are  affectionately 
cognizant  of  their  own  feelings,  who  de- 
light in  their  own  view  of  things,  who  have 
felt,  loved,  suffered,  and  enjoyed,  to  whom 
life  and  the  world  have  been  inwardly  real 
and  interesting,  for  whom  their  own  past 
especially  is  like  a  fair  landscape,  here  in 
full  sunshine,  there  flecked  with  shadows, 


ANATOLE    FRANCE  235 

but  all  a  picture  of  loveliness  and  a  thing 
to  dream  over. 

In  reminiscence,  as  in  painting,  the 
subject  must  be  somewhat  removed,  loss 
of  detail  yielding  a  gain  in  beauty,  since, 
in  the  one  case,  as  in  the  other,  what  we 
seek  is  not  an  inventory,  but  a  picture. 
This,  or  something  like  this,  is  what  Re- 
nan  had  in  mind  when  in  beginning  his 
*'  Souvenirs  "  he  remarked  that  what  a  man 
says  of  himself  is  always  poetry.  For  his 
own  part,  he  declares,  he  has  no  thought 
of  furnishing  matter  for  post-mortem  bio- 
graphical sketches.  He  is  going  to  tell 
the  truth  (mostly),  but  not  the  kind  of 
truth  of  which  biography  is  made.  Bio- 
graphy and  personal  reminiscence  are  two 
things,  and  can  never  be  written  in  the 
same  tone.  Many  things,  he  tells  us,  have 
been  put  into  his  book  on  purpose  to  pro- 
voke a  smile.  If  custom  had  permitted, 
he  would  more  than  once  have  written  on 
the  margin  of  the  page :  cum  grano  salis. 

One  thinks  of  Charles  Lamb,  though 
in  general  the  two  men  had  wonderfully 
little  in  common.  How  dearly  he  loved  to 
talk  of  himself,  hiding  the  while  behind 


236         FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

some  modestly  transparent  veil  of  mys- 
tification !  And  how  dearly  we  love  to  play 
the  innocent  game  with  him,  seeing  per- 
fectly what  is  going  on,  but,  as  children 
do,  making  pretense  of  being  deceived. 
Better  than  almost  any  one  else  he  had 
the  winsome  gift  of  half-serious,  tenderly 
humorous  self-disclosure.  As  Renan  said, 
it  is  all  poetry,  and  always  with  something 
to  smile  at. 

All  this  because  of  one  of  M.  Anatole 
France's  many  stray  bits  of  gossipy  re- 
miniscence concerning  the  old  quays  of 
Paris  and  his  boyish  adventures  among 
them!  Such  trifles  are  characteristic;  they 
connote  other  qualities,  and  of  themselves 
show  us  one  side  of  the  man  and  the 
writer.  He  loves  his  own  life,  especially 
his  real  life,  the  happy  years  that  lie  be- 
hind him.  The  power  to  see  them  is  to 
him  a  matter  of  wonderment,  a  kind  of 
miracle,  a  true  fairy's  gift.  If  he  could 
see  the  future  with  the  same  distinctness, 
the  fact  would  be  hardly  more  astonish- 
ing, and  probably  it  would  be  much  less 
beneficent.  So  he  tells  himself  in  one  of 
those  rare  and  precious  moods  when  the 


ANATOLE    FRANCE  237 

soul  seems  preternaturally  awake,  and  the 
commonest  every-day  objects  wear  a  look 
of  newness  and  mystery  till  we  are  taken 
with  a  kind  of  inward  shivering  as  if  we 
had  been  seeing  ghosts. 

For  the  more  connected  story  of  his 
youthful  memories  one  must  turn,  of 
course,  to  the  two  volumes  expressly  de- 
voted to  them,  "  Le  Livre  de  Mon  Ami "  and 
"Pierre  Noziere."  That  he  should  have 
written  two  such  books  is  significant  of 
the  hold  that  his  childhood  still  has  upon 
him.  But  the  two  are  none  too  many. 
How  delicious  they  are !  —  full  of  tender- 
ness and  humol-,  every  sentence  true  to 
the  pitch,  and  the  writing  perfect.  And 
how  many  pictures  they  leave  with  us! 
The  woman  in  white  and  her  lover  with 
the  black  whiskers.  The  ragged  street 
urchin,  Alphonse,  whom  the  well-fed,  well- 
dressed  house  boy  envied  and  pitied  by 
turns,  till  one  day  he  (the  good  boy) 
pilfered  a  bunch  of  grapes  from  the  side- 
board, lowered  them  out  of  the  window  by 
a  string,  and  called  upon  little  Alphonse 
to  take  them;  which  the  suspicious  Al- 
phonse  proceeded   to   do   with   a   sudden 


238         FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

twitch  at  the  cord  (such  rudeness!),  after 
which,  turning  up  his  face  to  the  window, 
he  thrust  out  his  tongue,  put  his  thumb 
to  his  nose,  and  ran  off  with  the  dainty. 
"My  httle  friends  had  not  accustomed 
me  to  such  fashions,"  the  good  boy  con- 
fides to  us.  And  then,  to  heighten  his 
sense  of  disappointment  (how  commonly 
grown-up  human  benevolence  is  similarly 
disrewarded!),  he  bethought  himself  that 
he  must  tell  his  mother  of  his  pious  theft. 
She  would  chide  him,  he  feared.  And  like 
a  good  mother  she  did,  but  with  laughter 
in  her  eyes. 

"'We  ought  to  give  away  our  own  good 
things,  not  those  of  another,'  she  said;  '  and 
we  must  know  how  to  give.' 

"*That  is  the  secret  of  happiness,'  added 
my  father,  'and  few  know  it.' 

"He  knew  it,  my  father." 

The  books  are  full  of  such  pictures, 
seen  first  by  the  child,  and  now  seen 
again,  losing  nothing  of  their  color,  through 
the  eyes  of  the  man  of  forty;  full,  too,  of 
a  boy's  dreams  and  ambitions.  Now  he 
will  be  a  famous  saint  (like  every  boy,  he 
is   bound   to   be  famous   somehow),   and 


ANATOLE    FRANCE  239 

instantly  he  sets  about  it  with  fastings, 
an  improvised  hair  shirt,  and  even  an  at- 
tempt, ingloriously  brought  to  nought  by 
the  strong  arms  of  the  housemaid,  to  play 
the  role  of  Simeon  Stylites  in  the  kitchen. 
Wliat  with  this  muscular,  unsympathetic 
maid,  —  who  also  tore  his  hair  shirt  from 
him,  —  and  his  father,  equally  unsym- 
pathetic, who  pronounced  him  "stupid," 
the  boy  had  a  bad  day  of  it,  and  by 
night-fall,  as  he  says,  "recognized  that  it 
is  very  diflScult  to  be  a  saint  while  living 
with  one's  family.  I  understood  why  St. 
Anthony  and  St.  Jerome  went  into  the 
desert  to  dwell  among  lions  and  satyrs; 
and  I  resolved  to  retire  the  next  day  to  a 
hermitage."  And  so  he  did,  choosing  a 
labyrinth  in  the  neighboring  Jardin  des 
Plantes. 

A  few  years  later,  wiser  now  and  more 
worldly-minded,  he  is  determined  to  set  up 
catalogues  like  his  old  friend  Father  Le 
Beau;  and  soon  (joy  on  the  top  of  joy, 
and  audacity  almost  past  confession)  he 
determines  that  he  will  some  day  print 
them,  and  read  the  proofs  I  Beyond  that 
he    can    conceive    of    no    higher    felicity 


240         FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

(though  he  has  since  learned,  through  the 
confidences  of  a  blase  literary  acquaint- 
ance, that  "one  wearies  of  everything  in 
this  world,  even  of  correcting  proofs!"). 

Needless  to  say,  he  did  not  become  a 
cataloguer,  more  than  he  had  become  a 
saint;  but  good  Father  Le  Beau,  for  all 
that,  determined  his  boyish  admirer's  vo- 
cation, inspiring  him  with  "a  love  for  the 
things  of  the  mind  and  with  a  weakness 
for  writing;"  inspiring  him,  also,  with  a 
passion  for  the  past  and  with  "ingenious 
curiosities,"  and,  by  the  example  of  intel- 
lectual labor  regularly  performed  without 
fatigue  and  without  worry,  filling  him 
from  childhood  with  a  desire  to  work  and 
instruct  himself.  "It  is  thanks  to  him," 
he  concludes,  "that  I  have  become  in 
my  own  way  a  great  reader,  a  zealous 
annotator  of  ancient  texts,  and  a  scrib- 
bler of  memoirs  that  will  never  see  the 
light." 

Good  Father  Le  Beau!  How  plainly 
we  can  see  him  at  his  pleasant  task,  and 
the  small  boy  beside  him  taking  his  les- 
son! And  if  any  be  ready  to  smile  at  the 
childish  story,  as  if  it  were  nothing  but  a 


ANATOLE   FRANCE  241 

childish  story,  —  well,  there  is  difference 
in  readers.  To  some,  let  us  hope,  the  sim- 
ple adventures  of  a  boy's  mind,  dreaming 
on  things  to  come,  will  seem  quite  as  en- 
tertaining, and  even  quite  as  instructive 
and  morally  profitable,  as  some  more 
highly  seasoned  adventures  of  a  man  who 
covets  his  neighbor's  wife,  or  a  woman 
who  covets  her  neighbor's  husband. 

Of  books  recounting  the  pleasures  and 
miseries  of  ilhcit  passion  modern  literature 
surely  suffers  no  lack;  and  truth  to  tell, 
M.  Anatole  France  himself  (the  more's 
the  pity)  has  contributed  to  an  already 
full  stock  two  or  three  examples  not  easily 
to  be  outdone  in  piquancy  of  situation 
or  freedom  of  speech.  Concerning  these 
no  account  is  to  be  taken  here.  Enough  to 
say  that  they  are  unspeakable,  —  in  Eng- 
lish,—  though,  not  to  do  them  injustice, 
it  should  be  added  that  neither  "Le  Lys 
Rouge,"  nor  even  "Histoire  Comique,"  for 
all  its  misleading,  pleasant-sounding  title, 
makes  the  path  to  the  everlasting  bonfire 
look  in  the  remotest  degree  alluring.  The 
old  truth,  old  as  man,  that  "to  be  car- 
nally minded  is  death,"  is  nowhere  more 


242         FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

convincingly  set  forth  than  in  the  modern 
French  novel,  whether  it  be  Balzac's,  Flau- 
bert's, Maupassant's,  Bourget's,  or  Ana- 
tole  France's. 

It  is  unfortunate,  we  must  think,  for  our 
author's '  reputation  and  vogue  outside  of 
his  own  country,  that  not  only  the  two 
of  his  books  just  now  named,  but  at  least 
three  others,  though  in  a  less  degree,  are 
unfitted  for  full  translation  into  English, 
or  even  to  be  left  in  their  original  tongue 
upon  the  open  shelves  of  public  libraries 
or  on  the  family  table.  But  what  then.? 
They  were  not  written  virginihus  pueris- 
que,  their  author  would  say,  and  even  their 
freest  parts  treat  of  nothing  worse  than 
every  newspaper  is  obliged  somehow  to 
chronicle,  however  it  may  veil  its  language, 
and  nothing  worse,  perhaps,  than  is  readily 
allowed  in  the  English  classics,  especially 
in  the  books  of  the  Bible  and  the  writings 
of  Shakespeare.  Wonderful  is  the  effect 
of  time  and  distance!  We  gaze  upon  nude 
statues  of  the  old  Greeks  and  Romans 
without  a  shiver,  but  the  representation 
of  an  American  President  bare  only  to 
the  waist  —  as  one  may  see,  in  all  kinds 


ANATOLE    FRANCE  243 

of  weather,  poor  unhappy-looking  George 
Washington  sitting  in  front  of  the  national 
capitol — affects  us  with  a  painful  sense 
of  discomfort,  not  to  say  of  positive  inde- 
cency. 

M.  Anatole  France,  as  has  been  said, 
seems  by  birth  and  early  predilection  to 
have  been  devoted  to  a  career  of  studious 
leisure.  He  would  always  be  contented, 
one  would  have  thought,  to  be  a  looker-on 
at  the  game  of  life,  sitting  by  the  wayside, 
book  in  hand,  and  watching  the  world 
go  past ;  taking  it  all  as  a  show ;  never 
so  much  as  considering  the  possibility  of 
entering  for  any  of  the  prizes  that  more 
ambitious  men  run  for,  nor  concerned  very 
much  as  to  who  should  win  or  who  lose  ; 
hardly  so  much  as  an  observer ;  a  spec- 
tator rather,  as  he  said  himself;  "in  love," 
as  he  said  again,  "with  the  eternal  illu- 
sion that  wraps  us  round,"  but  only  as 
an  illusion;  cultivating  his  own  garden, 
—  like  M.  Bergeret,  who  delighted  to  cut 
the  leaves  of  books,  esteeming  it  wise  to 
make  for  one's  self  pleasures  appropriate 
to  one's  profession;  at  the  most  a  col- 
lector of  old  books,   and  a  teller   of  old 


244         FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

tales;  a  lover  of  Virgil,  a  disciple  of  Epi- 
curus, a  friend  of  quietness,  and  a  wor- 
shiper of  the  Graces. 

Such  we  imagine  M.  Anatole  France  to 
have  been  when  he  wrote  his  earlier  vol- 
umes, including  the  one  which  the  major- 
ity of  readers  would  probably  name  as  the 
most  beautiful  of  them  all,  "Le  Crime  de 
Sylvestre  Bonnard."  The  dear  old  savant 
tells  his  own  story,  talking  now  to  his  cat, 
now  to  his  friendly  despot  of  a  house- 
keeper, now  to  good  Madame  de  Gabry, 
now,  best  of  all,  to  himself.  The  whole 
story  is,  as  it  were,  overheard  by  the  reader, 
and  surely  there  never  was,  nor  ever  will 
be,  a  prettier  revelation  of  an  old  man's 
soul. 

Like  Renan,  and  like  M.  Anatole  France, 
Sylvestre  Bonnard,  Member  of  the  Insti- 
tute, has  a  natural  sense  of  humor,  and  if 
he  does  not  put  into  his  narrative  things 
on  purpose  to  make  us  smile,  it  is  only 
because  he  is  in  no  way  thinking  of  us. 
He  smiles  often  enough  himself,  his  own 
oddities  and  blunders  as  an  absent-minded 
scholar  —  since,  like  Cowper's  Mr.  Bull, 
he  "has  too  much  genius  to  have  a  good 


ANATOLE    FRANCE  245 

memory"  —  providing  him  with  abundant 
occasion;  and  we  smile  with  him.  We  love 
him  for  his  goodness,  and  we  listen  de- 
lighted to  all  his  philosophy.  If  he  is  not 
a  saint,  he  is  something  better,  —  or  if  not 
better,  more  interesting  and  lovable,  —  a 
man  so  humanly  sweet,  so  simple-hearted, 
so  pure-minded,  so  bright  in  his  talk,  so 
admirable  in  his  kindness,  so  adorable  a 
confesser  of  his  own  foibles,  that  there  is 
no  resisting  him.  Dear  old  celibate!  — 
who  had  loved  a  pair  of  blue  eyes  in  his 
youth,  and  had  been  true  to  their  mem- 
ory ever  since!  Verily,  he  had  his  reward. 
Never  man  awaited  the  sunset  with  a  bet- 
ter grace. 

The  man  who  drew  this  character  w^as 
surely  at  peace  with  the  world  and  with 
himself.  Life  had  so  far  been  to  him 
mostly  a  fair-weather  stroll  in  a  pleasant 
country.  And  the  same  may  be  said,  with 
some  grains  of  qualification,  of  the  man 
who  wrote  the  weekly  articles  that  went 
to  the  making  of  the  four  volumes  of  "La 
Vie  Litteraire."  These  are  not  things  to 
last,  it  may  be,  like  "Le  Crime  de  Syl- 
vestre  Bonnard,"  which,  if  one  may  be  so 


246         FRIENDS   ON   THE   SHELF 

simple  as  to  prophesy,  can  hardly  fail  to 
become  a  classic;  but  for  the  present  they 
must  afford  to  many  readers,  if  not  a 
keener,  yet  a  more  various,  delight.  They 
are  books  of  extraordinary  interest,  in 
whatever  light  one  may  view  them.  As 
we  turn  them  over,  remarking  here  and 
there  the  pages  that  at  different  times  have 
especially  pleased  us,  we  find  ourselves 
saying  again  and  again.  Oh,  that  we  had 
such  books  in  English,  and  on  English 
subjects!  If  there  were  in  Great  Britain 
or  in  the  United  States  a  writer  who  could, 
week  by  week,  furnish  one  of  our  news- 
papers with  pieces  of  literary  criticism 
or  bookish  causerie  of  this  enchanting 
quality;  so  light,  so  graceful,  so  original, 
so  suggestive,  so  full  of  happy  surprises, 
so  bright  with  humor  and  philosophy,  so 
perfect  in  form  and  temper,  and  so  sat- 
isfying in  substance!  Yes,  if  there  were! 
How  quickly  we  would  all  subscribe  for 
that  newspaper!  The  articles  might  deal, 
as  M.  Anatole  France's  often  do,  with 
books  that  we  have  never  read  and  have 
no  thought  of  reading;  it  would  not  greatly 
matter.     If  the  subject  in  hand  were  no- 


ANATOLE    FRANCE  247 

thing  but  a  text-book  or  an  encyclopaedia, 
a  letter  from  an  inquisitive  correspondent, 
or  a  play  of  marionettes,  the  talk  about  it 
would  be  literature.  And  real  literature, 
served  to  us  fresh  every  Sunday  morning! 
The  very  thought  is  an  exhilaration.  We 
are  not  to  be  understood  as  implying  that 
excellent  literary  criticism  is  not  more  or 
less  often  written  in  English,  and  on  both 
sides  of  the  water.  The  question  is  not 
of  moderately  sound,  reasonably  instruc- 
tive, workmanlike  articles,  proper  enough 
to  be  read  and  forgotten,  but  of  essays 
full  of  charm,  full  of  genius,  full  of  poetry, 
—  essays  in  which,  to  adapt  a  saying  of 
Thoreau,  we  do  not  miss  the  hue  of  the 
mind,  essays  that  of  themselves  are  in 
the  truest  sense  little  masterpieces  of  the 
literary  art. 

He  had  never  thought  of  doing  such 
things.  His  old  publisher,  Calmann  Levy, 
"rather  friend  than  publisher,"  who  had 
welcomed  him  in  his  obscurity,  and  smiled 
at  his  first  humble  successes,  had  for 
years  been  chiding  his  indolence  and  dun- 
ning him  for  another  book.  But  he  was 
in  love  with  his  idle  ways  and  distrustful 


248         FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

of  his  capacity.  He  was  then  living  those 
"happy  years  without  writing,"  of  which 
we  have  seen  him  cherishing  so  fond  a 
remembrance.  But  now  came  the  manager 
of  *'Le  Temps,"  a  man  accustomed  to 
have  his  way,  and  behold,  the  dreamer's 
pen  is  again  covering  paper.  "I  believe 
you  have  a  talisman,"  the  new  critic  says 
to  the  editor,  in  dedicating  to  him  the  first 
of  the  four  resulting  volumes.  "You  do 
whatever  you  will.  You  have  made  of  me 
a  periodical  and  regular  writer.  You  have 
triumphed  over  my  indolence.  You  have 
utilized  my  reveries  and  coined  my  wits 
into  gold.  I  hold  you  for  an  incomparable 
economist." 

Such  are  the  services  of  journalism  to 
literature!  A  man  never  writes  better,  or 
more  easily,  than  when  regular  work  — 
not  too  pressing  —  keeps  his  hand  in 
play.  So  Sir  Walter  Scott,  hag-ridden  by 
debt,  if  he  finished  a  novel  in  the  morning 
began  another  in  the  afternoon,  because, 
as  he  explained,  it  was  less  diflScult  to 
keep  the  machine  running  than  to  start  it 
again  after  a  rest. 

In  this  same  dedicatory  epistle  to  M. 


ANATOLE    FRANCE  249 

Hebrard  are  to  be  found  some  of  the 
brightest  and  most  characteristic  things 
that  M.  Anatole  France  has  ever  written 
about  his  own  nature  and  habits,  as  w^ell 
as  about  his  ideas  of  critics  and  criticism. 
For  talking  about  himself,  as  we  have 
before  said,  and  as  the  reader  must  have 
discovered  even  from  our  few  quotations, 
he  has  the  prettiest  kind  of  talent.  "You 
are  very  easy  to  live  with,"  he  tells  M, 
Hebrard.  "You  never  find  fault  with 
me.  But  I  do  not  flatter  myself.  You  saw 
at  once  that  nothing  great  was  to  be  ex- 
pected, and  that  it  was  best  not  to  torment 
me.  For  that  reason  you  left  me  to  say 
what  I  pleased.  One  day  you  remarked 
of  me  to  a  common  friend,  — 
"*He  is  a  mocking  Benedictine.' 
"We  understand  ourselves  very  imper- 
fectly, but  I  think  your  definition  is  a 
good  one.  I  seem  to  myself  to  be  a  phi- 
losophical monk.  At  heart  I  belong  to 
an  abhaye  de  Theleme,  where  the  rule  is 
comfortable  and  obedience  easy,  where 
one  has  no  great  degree  of  faith,  perhaps, 
but  is  sure  to  be  very  pious." 

There  is  nobody  like  a  skeptic,  he  con- 


250         FRIENDS   ON   THE    SHELF 

tinues  (he  is  echoing  Montaigne),  for  al- 
ways observing  the  moralities  and  being 
a  good  citizen.  "A  skeptic  never  rebels 
against  existing  laws,  because  he  has  no 
expectation  that  any  power  will  be  able 
to  make  good  ones.  He  knows  that  much 
must  be  pardoned  to  the  Republic;"  that 
rulers  at  the  best  count  for  little;  that, 
as  Montaigne  said,  most  things  in  this 
world  do  themselves,  the  Fates  finding 
the  way.  Still  he  advises  his  manager 
never  to  confide  his  political  columns  to 
any  Thelemite.  The  gentle  spirit  of  melan- 
choly that  he  would  spread  over  every- 
thing would  be  a  discouragement  to  honest 
readers.  Ministers  are  not  to  be  sustained 
by  philosophy.  /'As  for  myself,"  he  adds, 
"I  maintain  a  suitable  modesty  and  re- 
strict myself  to  criticism." 

And  then,  in  two  sentences,  one  of 
which  has  attained  almost  to  the  rank  of 
a  familiar  quotation,  he  defines  criticism 
and  the  critic. 

"As  I  understand  it,  and  as  you  allow 
me  to  practice  it,  criticism,  like  philoso- 
phy and  history,  is  a  sort  of  romance,  and 
all  romance,  rightly  taken,  is  an  autobio- 


ANATOLE   FRANCE  251 

graphy.  The  good  critic  is  he  who  narrates 
the  adventures  of  his  own  mind  in  its 
intercourse  with  masterpieces." 

To  be  quite  frank,  he  declares,  the  critic 
should  begin  his  discourse  by  saying : 
"Gentlemen,  I  am  going  to  speak  about 
myself  apropos  of  Shakespeare,  apropos  of 
Racine,  or  of  Pascal,  or  of  Goethe.  It  is 
a  fine  occasion." 

And  here,  of  course,  the  battle  is  joined 
between  the  two  schools  of  critics :  the  sub- 
jective, or  impressionistic,  so  called,  on  one 
side,  and  the  objective,  or  scientific,  so 
called,  on  the  other. 

Into  this  controversy  (which,  like  many 
another,  may  yet  turn  out  to  be  concerned 
with  words  rather  than  with  things)  we 
feel  no  call  to  enter.  Like  our  author 
himself,  we  desire  to  maintain  the  modesty 
that  is  fitting  to  us.  We  content  ourselves, 
therefore,  with  some  random  comments 
upon  "La  Vie  Litteraire,"  which  to  our 
taste  is  one  of  the  most  delightfully  read- 
able books  of  recent  times.  Having  read  it 
and  reread  it,  we  are  (somewhat  ignorantly, 
to  be  sure,  having  nothing  like  an  ex- 
haustive acquaintance  with  universal  cur- 


252         FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

rent  literature)  very  much  of  Mr.  Edmund 
Gosse's  opinion  when  he  says  of  M.  Ana- 
tole  France  that  he  is  perhaps  "the  most 
interesting  intelhgence  at  tJiis  moment 
working  in  the  field  of  letters."  The  word 
"perhaps,"  it  will  be  noticed,  is  outside 
the  double  commas.  A  genuinely  modest 
man  likes  to  make  a  show  of  his  modesty 
even  in  his  use  of  "quotations. 

Whether  criticism  in  general,  as  critics 
in  general  write  it,  ought  to  be  of  one 
school  or  another,  subject  to  personal 
impression  or  subject  to  rule,  one  thing 
is  beyond  dispute:  the  singular  charm, 
one  feels  almost  like  saying  the  incom- 
parable charm,  of  "La  Vie  Litteraire  "  lies 
in  its  intimate,  individual  quality.  It  is 
not  a  set  of  formulas,  nor  even  a  thesau- 
rus of  literary  opinions  and  estimates.  It 
is  the  voice  of  a  man,  speaking  as  a  man. 
As  you  listen,  you  see  his  mind  at  work; 
you  know  what  he  thinks  about,  and  how 
he  thinks  about  it;  what  he  enjoys  best 
and  oftenest,  what  trains  his  reveries 
naturally  fall  into;  how  the  world  looks 
to  him,  past,  present,  and  future.  He  does 
not  set  himself  to  reveal  himself;    when 


ANATOLE    FRANCE  253 

men  do  that,  they  mostly  fail;  his  mind 
"plays  before  you.  Above  all  things,  he  is 
an  ironist.  There  is  nothing,  least  of  all 
anything  in  himself  or  concerning  him- 
self, that  he  cannot  smile  at,  though  there 
may  be  tears  in  his  eyes  at  the  same  mo- 
ment. He  admires,  and  can  perfectly 
express  his  admiration;  and  when  he  de- 
spises, he  is  no  more  at  a  loss.  The  more 
he  knows,  the  more  he  is  ignorant,  — 
and  the  more  he  wonders.  He  is  full  of 
modern  knowledge,  and  he  loves  of  all 
things  a  fairy  tale.  Shakespeare  delights 
him,  and  he  cannot  say  well  enough  nor 
times  enough  how  greatly  he  enjoys  the 
marionettes. 

It  can  hardly  have  been  an  accident  (and 
yet,  for  aught  we  know,  it  may  have  been, 
since  accident  often  seems  to  be  no  more 
foolish  than  the  rest  of  us)  that  his  first 
"Times"  essay  was  concerned  with  a  re- 
presentation of  "Hamlet,"  and  the  second 
with  the  latest  story  of  M.  Jules  Lemaitre. 
Both  the  Danish  prince  and  the  martyr 
Serenus  were  men  oppressed  and  finally 
overcome  by  a  sense  of  the  mystery  of 
things,  having  ideas,  almost  in  excess,  and 


254         FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

being  so  skillful  in  debate  that  they  could 
never  come  to  a  conclusion.  Like  horses 
and  politicians,  they  needed  blinders,  and 
for  lack  of  them  could  not  keep  a  straight 
course. 

Both  make  a  lively  appeal  to  our  crit- 
ic's sympathy.  In  his  own  way  he  is  suf- 
ficiently like  them.  And  so  what  ought, 
on  one  theory,  to  have  been  a  dissertation 
upon  Shakespeare's  conception  of  Ham- 
let's character,  runs  of  its  own  will  into 
an  address  to  the  Dane  himself.  He  is  so 
real  to  the  Frenchman  that  the  two  go 
home  together,  as  it  were,  after  the  play, 
and  the  Frenchman,  having  sat  silent  so 
long,  finds  his  heart  full  and  his  tongue 
suddenly  unloosed. 

First  he  must  apologize  to  Hamlet  for 
the  audience,  some  part  of  which,  as  he 
may  have  noticed,  seemed  a  trifle  inatten- 
tive and  light.  Hamlet  must  not  lay  this 
to  heart.  "It  was  an  audience  of  French- 
men and  Frenchwomen,"  he  should  re- 
member. "You  were  not  in  evening  dress, 
you  had  no  amorous  intrigue  in  the  world 
of  high  finance,  and  you  wore  no  flower 
in  your  buttonhole.     For  that  reason  the 


ANATOLE    FRANCE  255 

ladies  coughed  a  little  in  their  boxes  while 
eating  candied  fruits.  Your  adventures 
could  not  interest  them.  They  were  not 
worldly  adventures;  they  were  only  human 
adventures.  Besides,  you  force  people  to 
think,  and  that  is  an  offense  which  will 
never  be  pardoned  to  you  here." 

Still  there  were  a  few  among  the  spec- 
tators who  were  profoundly  moved,  a  few 
by  whom  the  melancholy  Dane  is  preferred 
before  all  other  beings  ever  created  by  the 
breath  of  genius.  The  critic  himself,  by 
a  happy  chance,  sat  near  one  such,  M. 
Auguste  Dorchain.  "He  understands  you, 
my  prince,  as  he  understands  Racine,  be- 
cause he  is  himself  a  poet." 

And  then,  after  a  little,  he  concludes  by 
confiding  to  Hamlet  what  a  mystery  and 
contradiction  the  world  continues  to  find 
him,  though  he  is  the  universal  man,  the 
man  of  all  times  and  all  countries,  though 
he  is  exactly  like  the  rest  of  us,  "a  man 
living  in  the  midst  of  universal  evil."  It 
is  just  because  he  is  like  the  rest  of  us, 
indeed,  that  we  find  his  character  a  thing 
so  impossible  to  grasp.  It  is  because  we 
do  not  understand  ourselves  that  we  can- 


256         FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

not  understand  liim.  His  very  inconsis- 
tencies and  contradictions  are  the  sign  of 
liis  profound  humanity.  "You  are  prompt 
and  slow,  audacious  and  timid,  benevolent 
and  cruel ;  you  believe  and  you  doubt ; 
you  are  wise,  and  above  everything  else  you 
are  insane.  In  a  word,  you  live.  Who 
of  us  does  not  resemble  you  in  some- 
thing ?  Who  of  us  thinks  without  contra- 
diction, and  acts  without  inconsistency  ? 
Wlio  of  us  is  not  insane  ?  Wlio  of  us  but 
says  to  you  with  a  mixture  of  pity,  of  sym- 
pathy, of  admiration,  and  of  horror, '  Good- 
night, sweet  prince;  and  flights  of  angels 
sing  thee  to  thy  rest!'" 

This  may  not  be  great  Shakespearean 
criticism;  certainly  it  bears  no  very  strik- 
ing resemblance  to  the  ordinary  German 
article  that  walks  abroad  under  that  name; 
but  at  least  it  is  good  reading,  and  so  far 
as  may  be  possible  in  a  few  sentences,  it 
may  be  thought  to  go  somewhat  near  to 
the  heart  of  the  matter. 

As  for  the  Serenus  of  M.  Jules  Le- 
maitre,  he,  too,  is  a  thinker  and  dreamer 
set  to  live  in  difficult  conditions.  He,  too, 
is  caught  in  contradictory  currents,  and 


ANATOLE    FRANCE  257 

finds  it  impossible  to  make  the  shore. 
For  him,  as  for  Hamlet,  death  is  the  only 
way  out.  His  creator,  of  whom  M.  Anatole 
France  loves  to  talk,  is  himself  a  born 
skeptic,  always  asking,  under  one  ingen- 
ious form  and  another,  the  question  of  the 
old  Roman  functionary,  "What  is  truth  ?" 
and  never  getting  an  answer.  Like  his 
friend  and  critic,  "he  loves  believers  and 
believes  not."  It  may  have  been  he  of 
whom  it  is  remarked,  somewhere,  that 
he  has  "a  mind  full  of  ironic  curiosity." 
We  have  been  turning  the  volumes  over 
in  search  of  the  phrase.  We  did  not  find 
it,  but  we  found  ourselves  repeating  the 
word  with  which  we  began:  "M.  Anatole 
France  is  a  writer  who  is  continually  say- 
ing something."  It  seems  to  us  truer  than 
ever;  and  it  seems  a  considerable  merit. 

In  the  course  of  our  search  we  fell 
anew  upon  the  essay  dealing  with  that 
amazing  book,  the  "Journal"  of  the  Gon- 
court  brothers.  It  is  no  very  enlivening 
subject,  one  would  say,  but  the  essay  is 
of  the  brightest,  sparkling  from  end  to 
end  with  those  "good  things"  concerning 
which  the  scientific  critic  may  say  what  he 


258         FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

will,  so  long  as  the  impressionistic  critic 
will  be  kind  enough  to  furnish  them  for 
our  delectation.  As  plain  untheoretical 
readers,  we  are  thankful  to  be  interested. 

Of  all  books,  as  we  know  already, 
M.  Anatole  France  believes  in  personal 
memoirs.  In  his  opinion  writers  are  sel- 
dom so  likely  to  be  well  inspired  as  when 
they  speak  of  themselves.  La  Fontaine's 
pigeon  had  good  reason  to  say :  — 

"Mon  voyage  depeint 
Vous  sera  d'un  plaisir  extreme. 
Je  dirai:   'J'etais  la;   telle  chose  m'avint:' 
Vous  y  croirez  etre  vous-meme." 

Even  a  cold  writer  like  Marmontel  gets 
a  hold  upon  us  "as  soon  as  he  begins 
to  tell  about  a  little  Limousin  who  read 
the  Georgics  in  a  garden  where  the  bees 
were  murmuring,"  —  because  he  was  the 
boy,  and  the  bees  were  those  whose  honey 
he  ate,  the  same  which  he  saw  his  aunt 
warming  in  the  hollow  of  her  hand,  and 
refreshing  with  a  drop  of  wine,  when  the 
cold  had  benumbed  them.  As  for  St. 
Augustine's  "Confessions,"  so  called,  our 
essayist  has  no  very  exalted  opinion  of 
them.   The  great  doctor,  he  thinks,  hardly 


ANATOLE    FRANCE  259 

confesses  enough.  Worse  yet,  he  hates 
his  sins;  and,  in  the  way  of  Hterature, 
"nothing  spoils  a  confession  Hke  repent- 
ance." 

But  Rousseau,  "  poor  great  Jean- 
Jacques,"  "whose  soul  held  so  many  mis- 
eries and  grandeurs,"  —  he  surely  made 
no  half-hearted  confession.  "He  acknow- 
ledged his  own  faults  and  those  of  other 
people  with  marvelous  facility.  It  cost 
him  nothing  to  tell  the  truth.  However 
vile  and  ignoble  it  might  be,  he  knew  that 
he  could  render  it  touching  and  beauti- 
ful. He  had  secrets  for  that,  the  secrets 
of  genius,  which,  like  fire,  purifies  every- 
thing." 

But  we  must  be  done  with  quotation, 
though  the  matter  that  offers  itself  is  fairly 
without  end.  Especially  one  would  be 
glad  to  cite  some  of  the  essayist's  remi- 
niscences of  the  men  he  has  known :  some 
of  them  famous,  like  Flaubert,  "a  pessi- 
mist full  of  enthusiasm,"  who  "had  the 
good  part  of  the  things  of  this  world,  in 
that  he  could  admire;"  Jules  Sandeau, 
whom  the  critic,  when  a  child,  used  to 
meet  on  the  quays  of  Paris,  which  are  "the 


260         FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHEEF 

adopted  country  of  all  men  of  thought  and 
taste;"  and  dear  old  Barbey  d'Aurevilly, 
so  queerly  dressed,  so  profane  a  believer, 
"so  frightfully  Satanic  and  so  adorably 
childish;"  and  others,  —  and  these  among 
the  best,  —  two  or  three  priests,  in  par- 
ticular, —  never  heard  of  except  in  our 
author's  pages. 

One  would  like,  also,  to  speak  of  his 
favorite  heterodox  theory  touching  the 
fallible  nature  of  posterity  as  a  judge  of 
works  of  art;  of  the  fun  that  he  pokes  so 
effectively  at  the  new  school  of  symbol- 
ists and  decadents  (small  wonder  they 
do  not  love  him);  of  his  ideas  upon  lan- 
guage, upon  history,  upon  the  grossness 
of  Zola,  —  with  which  he  as  an  artist  has 
no  patience,  —  upon  the  exalted  rank  of 
the  critical  essay,  upon  the  educational 
value  of  the  humanities.  These  and  many 
other  things  have  their  place  in  the  four 
volumes,  and  every  one  is  touched  with 
grace  and  something  of  originality.  Every- 
where the  personal  note  makes  itself 
heard.  It  is  a  voice,  not  the  scratching  of 
a  pen,  that  we  listen  to,  the  voice  of  a 
man  who  never  forgets  that  he  was  once  a 


ANATOLE    FRANCE  261 

child.  He  has  hved  in  Eden.  We  all  begin, 
he  tells  himself,  where  Adam  began.  "In 
those  blessed  hours,"  he  says,  "I  have  seen 
thistles  springing  up  amid  heaps  of  stones 
in  little  sunny  streets  where  birds  were 
singing;  and  I  tell  you  the  truth,  it  was 
Paradise." 

The  two  or  three  years  during  which 
he  was  contributing  weekly  articles  to  "  Le 
Temps"  were  not  quite  of  this  heavenly 
quality,  we  may  safely  presume;  in  the 
inevitable  course  of  things  the  gates  of 
Eden  must  for  some  time  have  been  al- 
ready closed  against  him;  but  if  one  is 
to  judge  by  his  books  of  the  period,  mean- 
ing to  include  among  them  "La  Rotisserie 
de  la  Reine  Pedauque,"  "Les  Opinions  de 
M.  Jerome  Coignard,"  and  "Le  Jardin 
d'Epicure,"  —  three  of  the  best  and  most 
characteristic,  though  the  two  first  named 
are  not  for  readers  afflicted  with  what  a 
French  critic  calls  pudeur  livresque,  — 
they  were  still  years  of  quietness  and  a 
reasonably  full  content.  He  was  writing 
and  studying  more  than  formerly,  to  be 
sure,  and  of  course^  by  his  own  showing, 
was  learning  so  much  the  less;    but,  tak- 


262         FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

ing  everything  into  account,  he  and  the 
world,  for  all  its  badness,  were  pulling 
pretty  well  together. 

Since  then,  somehow,  we  cannot  pro- 
fess to  know  exactly  how  or  why,  a  change 
appears  to  have  come  over  him;  a  change 
not  altogether  for  the  worse,  nor  alto- 
gether for  the  better.  Life,  in  his  eyes,  is 
no  longer  so  bright  as  it  was.  He  is  more 
serious,  more  satirical,  less  disposed  to  mind 
his  rhyme  and  let  the  river  run  under  the 
bridge  ;  a  little  out  of  conceit  with  his 
old  role  of  saunterer  and  looker-on.  He 
seems  to  have  heard  a  drum-beat,  and 
if  there  is  to  be  a  fight,  he  will,  after  a 
rather  independent  fashion  of  his  own, 
bear  a  hand  in  it.  Perhaps  this  is  the 
manlier  part.  At  all  events,  there  is  no 
quarreling  with  it,  and  the  evil  days  on 
which  Anatole  France  has  fallen  ("/e  per- 
fide  Anatole  France,'''  as  we  are  told  that 
his  political  enemies — a  strange  word  for 
use  in  connection  with  the  author  of  "  Syl- 
vestre  Bonnard"  and  "Le  Jardin  d'Epi- 
cure"  —  are  accustomed  to  call  him)  have 
borne  their  full  share  of  fruit. 

His  second  manner,  to  call  it  so,  is  like 


ANATOLE    FRANCE  263 

his  first  in  this  regard,  that  its  most  suc- 
cessful creation  is  an  old  scholar.  M. 
Bergeret  is  Sylvestre  Bonnard  with  a  dif- 
ference, as  the  present  Anatole  France  is 
the  old  Anatole  France  with  a  difference. 
It  strikes  us  as  almost  a  pleasantry  of 
Fate  that  these  two  leading  characters 
should  stand  thus  as  representatives  of 
their  creator's  two  selves,  or,  if  one  pre- 
fers to  express  it  so,  of  their  creator's  one 
self  in  his  two  periods  of  calm  and  storm. 
Sylvestre  Bonnard's  life  ran  an  even 
course.  Its  incidents  were  no  more  than 
the  windings  and  falls  of  a  quiet  brook, 

—  just  enough  to  keep  it  wholesomely 
alive  and  give  it  a  desirable  diversity  and 
picturesqueness.  The  world  was  good  to 
him;  and  he  thanked  it.  If  he  did  not 
marry  the  girl  with  the  pair  of  blue  eyes, 

—  the  eyes  de  pervenche,  —  he  was  happier 
in  his  bachelorhood  than  the  majority  of 
men  are  in  their  married  condition,  and 
doubly  happy  toward  the  last,  when  time 
and  chance  (with  more  or  less  of  human 
assistance)  brought  him  his  heart's  desire 
in  the  opportunity  to  care  for  his  lost  Cle- 
mentine's   grandchild.      His    professional 


264         FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

successes  were  according  to  his  taste:  he 
was  a  member  of  the  Institute,  an  author- 
ity upon  ancient  texts,  and  in  his  old  age 
the  happy  author  of  a  book  upon  a  new 
hobby. 

Such  was  the  hfe  of  a  savant  as  M.  Ana- 
tole  France  conceived  it  before  the  world 
was  too  much  with  him,  before  "  National- 
ists" and  "Royalists"  had  begun  to  look 
askance  upon  him,  and  call  him  traitor. 

M.  Bergeret,  like  M.  Bonnard,  is  a  man 
of  kindly  nature,  a  scholar,  and  a  lover  of 
peace,  but  life  to  him,  as  to  Shelley,  has 
been  "dealt  in  another  measure;"  a  dis- 
loyal wife,  uncongenial  daughters,  squalor 
in  his  house,  disappointment  in  his  call- 
ing, lack  of  favor  with  his  colleagues  and 
superiors,  and,  to  fill  his  cup,  the  Dreyfus 
controversy,  which  makes  him  a  target 
for  stoning. 

And  in  the  midst  of  it  all,  notwithstand- 
ing it  all,  what  a  dear  old  soul,  and  what 
an  interesting  talker!  —  so  amiably  philo- 
sophical, so  keen  in  his  thrusts,  so  sly  in 
his  humor,  so  fond  of  good  company,  his 
own  and  his  dog's  included,  and,  in  spite 
of  his  weaknesses,  so  equal  to  tlie  occa- 


ANATOLE    FRANCE  265 

sion!  If  he  is  irreligious,  according  to  his 
neighbors'  standards,  it  is  at  least  "with 
decency  and  good  taste." 

The  four  volumes  in  which  he  figures 
("Histoire  Contemporaine,"  they  are  jointly 
called),  like  all  the  works  of  their  author, 
are  crammed  with  clever  sayings.  There 
is  no  great  story,  of  course,  though  some 
of  the  incidents  are  many  shades  too  lively 
to  be  set  in  modest  English  type;  but  the 
characterization  and  the  dialogue  are  of 
the  best,  —  in  the  good  Yankee  sense  of 
the  word,  "complete." 

For  its  full  appreciation  the  book  — 
it  is  really  one,  in  spite  of  its  four  titles  — 
demands  a  more  familiar  acquaintance 
with  the  ins  and  outs  of  current  French 
politics  than  the  average  American  reader 
is  likely  to  bring  to  it.  There  are  so  many 
wheels  within  wheels,  and  the  intrigues 
are  made,  of  set  purpose  on  the  author's 
part,  to  turn  upon  desires  and  considera- 
tions so  almost  incredibly  sordid  and  petty ! 
It  is  a  comedy;  we  are  bound  to  laugh;  but 
it  is  also  a  horror,  and  is  meant  to  be. 
Satire  was  never  more  biting.  The  game 
of  provincial  politics,  bishop-making  and 


266         FRIENDS   ON   THE   SHELF 

all,  is  played  with  merciless  particularity 
before  the  reader's  eyes;  and  if  he  fails  to 
follow  some  of  the  moves  with  perfect  in- 
telligence, he  sees  only  too  well  the  small- 
ness  and  baseness  and  cruelty  of  the  whole ; 
a  game  in  which  a  matron's  honor  is  no 
more  than  a  pawn  upon  the  chessboard, 
to  be  given  and  taken  without  so  much  as 
an  extra  pulse-beat,  even  an  extra  pulse- 
beat  of  her  own.  If  it  be  true,  or  within  a 
thousand  miles  of  true,  —  well,  to  repeat 
the  saying  of  one  of  old,  a  critic  accounted 
wise  in  his  day,  "man  hath  no  preemi- 
nence above  a  beast!" 

Poor  M.  Bergeret!  He  ought  to  have 
been  so  happy!  Like  his  human  creator, 
he  was  born  for  life  in  a  cloister,  some 
Abbaye  de  Theleme,  where  he  should 
have  had  nothing  to  do  but  to  read  his 
books,  say  his  prayers,  mind  a  few  cab- 
bages, perhaps,  and  be  quiet;  and  instead 
of  that,  here  he  is  passing  his  days  in 
such  a  turmoil  that  he  experiences  a  kind 
of  joy  on  finding  himself  in  the  street,  the 
one  place  where  he  gets  a  taste  of  "that 
sweetest  of  good  things,  philosophical  lib- 
erty."  And  with  all  the  rest  of  his  tribula- 


ANATOLE    FRANCE  267 

tions  there  falls  upon  him  that  dreadful 
nightmare  of  the  Dreyfus  case.  Neither 
he  nor  his  neighbors  can  let  it  alone.  It 
is  like  the  bitterness  of  aloes  in  all  their 
conversation. 

One  resource  he  still  has;  one  neigh- 
bor, better  still,  one  housemate,  with 
whom  he  can  discuss  anything,  even  the 
"Affaire,"  with  no  risk  of  being  stoned 
or  misunderstood.  His  dog  Riquet,  though 
he  "does  not  understand  irony"  (a  con- 
genital deficiency,  it  must  have  been, 
with  such  opportunities),  is  to  our  Maitre 
de  Conferences  a  la  Faculte  des  Lettres 
a  true  friend  in  need.  For  that  matter, 
indeed,  M.  Bergeret  is  probably  not  the 
only  man  who  has  found  it  one  of  the 
best  points  in  a  dog's  favor  that  you  can 
say  to  him  anything  you  please.  If  your 
human  neighbor  stands  in  perishing  need 
of  wholesome  truth,  or  if  you  stand  in 
sore  need  of  expressing  it  to  him,  and  if 
there  happens  to  be  some  not  unnatural 
unwillingness  on  his  part,  or  some  mo- 
mentary lack  of  courage  on  yours,  why, 
you  have  only  to  deliver  your  message  to 
him  vicariously,  as  it  were,  to  the  sensible 


268         FRIENDS    ON   THE   SHELF 

relief  of  your  own  mind,  if  not  to  the  edi- 
fication of  his. 

"Riquet,"  said  M.  Bergeret,  after  a  vain 
endeavor  to  make  one  of  his  brother  pro- 
vincials submit  himself  to  reason,  "Riquet, 
your  velvety  ears  hear  not  him  who  speaks 
best,  but  him  who  speaks  loudest."  And 
Riquet,  well  used  to  his  master's  conversa- 
tional eccentricities,  took  the  compliment 
in  good  part ;  in  much  better  part,  at 
all  events,  than  any  human  interlocutor 
would  have  been  likely  to  take  it.  For 
really,  unless  one  actually  lost  one's  temper, 
one  could  not  say  just  that  to  a  neighbor 
and  equal,  especially  if  it  happened  to  be 
true. 

For  a  heretic  living  among  the  ortho- 
dox there  is  nothing  like  keeping  a  dog. 
So  we  were  ready  to  say  and  leave  it; 
but  we  bethink  ourselves  in  season  that 
there  is  a  more  excellent  way.  Keep  a 
dog,  if  you  will,  but  keep  also  the  pen 
of  a  novelist.  Then  all  your  beliefs  and 
half  beliefs  and  unbeliefs,  all  your  bene- 
volently contemptuous  opinions  of  men 
and  of  men's  institutions,  all  your  trea- 
sures of  irony  and  satire,   dear  as  these 


ANATOLE    FRANCE  269 

ever  are  to  the  man  who  possesses  them, 
instead  of  being  wasted  upon  a  pair  of 
velvety  ears,  may  be  trumpeted  to  the 
world  at  large  through  the  lips  of  a  third 
party,  a  "character,"  so  called,  some  M. 
Bergeret,  if  you  can  invent  him,  or  an 
Abbe  Coignard. 

It  is  one  of  the  best  reasons  for  read- 
ing fiction,  by  the  way,  provided  it  is 
written  by  a  man  of  insight  and  force, 
that  he  is  so  much  more  likely  to  tell  us 
what  he  thinks  when  he  is  not  compelled 
to  speak  in  his  own  person. 

A  happy  lot  is  the  novelist's.  Such  a 
more  than  angelic  liberty  as  he  enjoys, 
so  comfortably  irresponsible  and  blameless 
as  he  is,  whatever  happens!  One  thinks 
again  of  Jerome  Coignard,  concerning 
whom  too  little  is  finding  its  way  into 
this  paper.  That  grand  old  Christian 
and  reprobate,  as  we  know,  could  live 
pretty  much  as  he  listed,  and  hold  pretty 
much  such  "opinions"  as  pleased  him, 
at  ease  all  the  while  in  the  assurance  that 
somewhere  in  a  deep  inner  closet,  fast 
under  lock  and  key,  he  preserved  a  faith 
in  the  Christian  mysteries  so  perfect  and 


270         FRIENDS    ON   THE   SHELF 

unsoiled  —  never  having  been  subjected 
to  any  earthly  contact  —  that  the  good 
St.  Peter,  when  the  inevitable  time  should 
come,  would  be  sure  to  pass  its  possessor 
into  the  good  place  without  a  question. 

Yet  it  will  never  do  for  us  to  inti- 
mate that  M.  Anatole  France  has  sought 
to  save  either  comfort  or  reputation  by 
talking  through  a  mask.  His  theological, 
political,  and  socialistic  heresies,  if  you 
call  them  such,  this  being  matter  of  opin- 
ion, have  been  too  openly  expounded,  and 
have  brought  him,  as  has  already  been 
told,  too  many  enemies  and  reproaches. 
The  most  that  we  started  to  say  under 
this  head  was  that  the  storms  into  which 
the  currents  of  the  world  have  drifted  him 
are  reflected  in  his  "Histoire  Contempo- 
raine,"  especially  in  the  difference  between 
his  M.  Bergeret  and  his  M.  Bonnard. 

Of  the  two,  M.  Bergeret  has  the  greater 
philosophic  interest  for  us,  as  well  as  the 
greater  number  of  rememberable  things 
to  say  to  us.  If  the  reader  wishes  to  see 
him  in  two  highly  contrasted  situations, 
let  him  turn  to  the  wonderful  chapter  de- 
scribing his  sensations  and  behavior  imme- 


ANATOLE    FRANCE  271 

diately  after  detecting  his  wife's  infidelity, 
and  the  beautiful  one  in  which  he  and 
his  more  practical  sister  visit  together  the 
old  Paris  mansion  in  which  they  had  passed 
some  portion  of  their  childhood.  They 
were  house-hunting  at  the  time,  and  the 
Master,  falling  into  one  of  his  far-away, 
philosophical  moods,  remarked,  apropos 
of  something  or  nothing  :  "  Time  is  a 
pure  idea,  and  space  is  no  more  real 
than  time."  "That  may  be  so,"  answered 
his  matter-of-fact,  executive-minded  sister, 
"but  it  costs  more  in  Paris." 

Doctor  Johnson  called  himself  "an 
old  struggler,"  and  the  words  come  un- 
bidden into  our  minds  as  we  review  M. 
Bergeret's  story.  To  us,  we  must  confess, 
the  old  Latin  professor  seems  almost  as 
real  a  personage  as  the  Great  Cham  of  lit- 
erature himself.  We  hope  he  is  happy  in 
his  new  post  of  honor  at  the  Sorbonne. 
It  was  time,  surely,  that  some  of  the  quails 
and  the  manna  should  be  found  in  his 
basket. 

And  now  it  is  pleasant  to  add,  by  way 
of  ending,  that  the  latest  book  of  M.  Ana- 
tole  France  seems  to  indicate  that  he  also, 


272         FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

as  well  as  the  man  of  his  creation,  has 
come  out  into  a  larger  place.  His  mood 
is  quieter  and  less  satirical,  though  he  is 
still  many  degrees  more  serious  than  in  the 
old  days  of  "Thais  "  and  "Sylvestre  Bon- 
nard."  "Sur  la  Pierre  Blanche"  is  a  work 
of  the  rarest  distinction ;  not  a  book  for 
the  casual  reader  to  hurry  over  in  pursuit 
of  a  story  (in  a  loose  way  of  speaking  it 
may  be  characterized  as  a  volume  of  ima- 
ginary conversations),  but  one  to  be  cher- 
ished and  dwelt  upon  by  such  as  love  the 
perfection  of  art  and  are  not  averse  to 
knowing  what  kind  of  thoughts  visit  a  free- 
thinking,  humanity -loving  man,  of  a  phi- 
losophical, half-conservative,  half-radical 
turn  of  mind,  in  these  days  of  social  and 
political  unrest,  as  he  looks  back  upon  the 
origins  of  Christianity  and  forward  into 
those  new  and  presumably  brighter  eras 
which  we  who  live  now  may  dream  of,  but 
never  see. 

The  motto  of  the  book  explains  the  sig- 
nificance of  its  title:  "You  seem  to  have 
slept  upon  the  white  stone  amongst  the 
people  of  dreams."  Toleration,  the  spread 
of  peace,  imperialism,  the  socialistic  evolu- 


ANATOLE    FRANCE  273 

tion  (following  hard  upon  the  capitalistic 
evolution,  now  at  its  height,  or  pass- 
ing), the  yellow  peril,  so  called,  the  white 
peril,  the  future  of  Africa, — these  are  some 
of  the  larger  and  timelier  questions  con- 
sidered. In  general,  the  thoughts  of  the 
book  are  those  of  a  scholar  whose  face  is 
turned  toward  practical  issues.  The  author 
is  not  concerned  with  any  Utopia,  — ab- 
solute justice,  by  his  theory,  being  not  a 
thing  to  be  so  much  as  hoped  for,  —  but 
with  some  quite  possible  amelioration  of 
the  existing  order,  and  some  gradual,  natu- 
ral, irresistible  approaches  (irresistible  be- 
cause they  are  the  work  of  Nature  herself) 
toward  a  state  of  society  less  unequal,  not 
to  say  less  unendurable,  than  the  present. 

Let  those  scoff  who  will;  for  ourselves 
we  rejoice  to  see  the  man,  like  the  boy, 
"dreaming  on  things  to  come." 

At  the  same  time,  we  should  not  be 
sorry  to  believe  that,  in  the  heat  of  writ- 
ing, and  out  of  the  love,  natural  to  all  of 
us,  of  making  facts  conform  to  theory, 
we  may  have  laid  a  thought  too  much  of 
emphasis  upon  the  alterations  through 
which  his   mind  has   passed.     His  days, 


274         FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

we  suspect,  have,  after  all,  been  pretty 
closely  bound  each  to  each  by  natural 
piety.  We  recall  his  fine  saying  about 
Renan,  brought  up  in  the  Roman  Church 
and  dying  an  unbeliever,  that  he  changed 
little.  "He  was  like  his  native  land,  where 
clouds  float  across  the  sky,  but  the  soil  is 
of  granite,  and  oaks  are  deeply  rooted." 

Changed  or  unchanged,  in  his  first 
manner  or  his  second.  Republican  or 
Nationalist,  socialist,  anti-imperialist,  "in- 
tellectual," or  what  not,  who  will  refuse 
to  read  a  writer  who  can  express  himself 
after  such  a  fashion  ? 


VERBAL   MAGIC 


VERBAL    MAGIC 

A  MUSIC-LOVER  and  devoted  concert-goer 
of  my  acquaintance  —  "  uninstructed,  but 
sensitive,"  to  characterize  him  in  his  own 
words  —  is  accustomed  to  say  that  he 
distinguishes  several  kinds  of  enjoyable 
music.  One  kind  is  interesting  :  here  he 
puts  the  work  of  composers  so  unlike 
as  Berlioz  and  Brahms.  Another  kind  is 
exciting;  under  which  head  he  ranks  the 
greater  part  of  Wagner  and  the  Bach 
fugues!  And  still  another  kind  is  charming. 
Whenever  he  uses  this  last  epithet,  he  adds 
an  explanation,  the  word  being  now  so 
worn  by  indiscriminate  handling  as  hardly 
to  pass  by  itself  at  its  full  face  value. 
He  means  that  the  music  thus  described 
—  heavenly  music,  he  sometimes  calls  it 
(of  which  his  typical  example  seems  to 
be  Schubert's  unfinished  symphony)  — 
has  upon  him  an  indescribable  ravishing 
effect,  as  if  it  really  and  literally  charmed 
him.    Exactly  why  this  should  be,  he  does 


278         FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

not  profess  to  decide.  All  such  composi- 
tions are  highly  melodious  and  in  some 
good  degree  simple;  but  then  there  is 
plenty  of  other  excellent  music  to  which 
the  same  terms  seem  to  be  equally  ap- 
plicable, which  nevertheless  lays  him 
under  no  such  spell.  "I  don't  undertake 
to  explain  it,"  he  says;  "so  far  as  I  am 
concerned,  it  is  all  a  matter  of  feeling," 

Analogous  to  this  is  my  own  experi- 
ence —  and,  I  suppose,  that  of  readers 
in  general  —  with  certain  fragments  of 
poetry,  which  have  for  me  an  ineffa- 
ble and  apparently  inexliaustible  charm. 
Other  poetry  is  beautiful,  enjoyable,  stim- 
ulating, everything  that  poetry  ought  to 
be,  except  that  it  lacks  this  final  some- 
thing which,  not  to  leave  it  absolutely 
without  a  name,  we  may  call  magic. 
Whatever  it  be  called,  it  pertains  not  to 
any  poet's  work  as  a  whole,  nor  in  strict- 
ness, I  think,  to  any  poem  as  a  whole, 
but  to  single  verses  or  couplets.  And  to 
draw  the  line  still  closer,  verse  of  this 
magical  quality  —  though  here,  to  be  sure, 
I  may  be  disclosing  nothing  but  my 
own  intellectual  limitations  —  is  discover- 


VERBAL   MAGIC  279 

able  only  in  the  work  of  a  certain  few 
poets. 

The  secret  of  the  charm  is  past  find- 
ing out:  so  I  like  to  believe,  at  all  events. 
Magic  is  magic;  if  it  could  be  explained, 
it  would  be  something  else;  to  use  the 
word  is  to  confess  the  thing  beyond  us. 
Such  verses  were  never  written  to  order  or 
by  force  of  will,  since  genius  and  our  old 
friend  —  or  enemy  —  "  an  infinite  capacity 
for  taking  pains,"  so  far  from  being  one, 
are  not  even  distantly  related.  The  poet 
himself  could  never  tell  how  such  perfec- 
tion was  wrought  or  whence  it  came;  nor 
is  its  natural  history  to  be  made  out  by 
any  critic.  The  best  we  can  do  with  it  is 
to  enjoy  it,  thankful  to  have  our  souls 
refreshed  and  our  taste  purified  by  its 
"heavenly  alchemy;"  as  the  best  that  our 
musical  friend  can  do  with  the  unfinished 
symphony  is  to  surrender  himself  to  its 
fascination,  and  be  carried  by  it,  as  I 
have  heard  him  more  than  once  express 
himself,  up  to  "heaven's  gate." 

And  yet  it  is  not  in  human  nature  to 
forego  the  asking  of  questions.  The  mind 
will  have  its  inquisitive  moods,  and  some- 


280         FRIENDS    ON   THE   SHELF 

times  it  loves  to  play,  in  a  kind  of  make- 
believe,  with  mysteries  which  it  has  no 
thought  of  solving,  —  a  harmless  and  per- 
haps not  unprofitable  exercise,  if  entered 
upon  modestly  and  pursued  without  illu- 
sions. We  may  wonder  over  things  that 
interest  us,  and  even  go  so  far  as  to  talk 
about  them,  though  we  have  no  expecta- 
tion of  saying  anything  either  new  or  final. 
Take,  then,  the  famous  lines  from 
Wordsworth's  "Solitary  Reaper:"  — 

"Will  no  one  tell  me  what  she  sings?  — 
Perhaps  the  plaintive  numbers  flow 
For  old,  unhappy,  far-off  things. 
And  battles  long  ago." 

The  final  couplet  of  this  stanza  is  a  typical 
example  of  what  is  here  meant  by  verbal 
magic.  I  am  heartily  of  Mr.  Swinburne's 
mind  when  he  says  of  it,  "In  the  whole 
expanse  of  poetry  there  can  hardly  be  two 
verses  of  more  perfect  and  profound  and 
exalted  beauty;"  although  my  own  slender 
acquaintance  with  literature  as  a  whole 
would  not  have  justified  me  in  so  sweeping 
a  mode  of  speech.  The  utmost  that  I  could 
have  ventured  to  say  would  have  been 
that  I  knew  of  no  lines  more  supremely. 


VERBAL   MAGIC  281 

indescribably,  perennially  beautiful.  Nor 
can  I  sympathize  with  Mr.  Courthope  in 
his  contention  that  the  lines  are  nothing 
in  themselves,  but  depend  for  their  "high 
quality"  upon  their  association  with  the 
image  of  the  solitary  reaper.  On  such  a 
point  the  human  consciousness  may  pos- 
sibly not  be  infallible;  but  at  all  events,  it 
is  the  best  ground  we  have  to  go  on,  and 
unless  I  am  strangely  deluded,  my  own 
delight  is  in  the  verses  themselves,  and  not 
merely  nor  mainly  in  their  setting.  Yet 
of  what  cheap  and  common  materials  they 
are  composed,  and  how  artlessly  they  are 
put  together!  Nine  every-day  words,  such 
as  any  farmer  might  use,  not  a  fine  word 
among  them,  following  each  other  in  the 
most  unstudied  manner  —  and  the  result 
perfection ! 

By  the  side  of  this  example  let  us  put 
another,  equally  familiar,  from  Shake- 
speare :  — 

"We  are  such  stuff 

As  dreams  are  made  on,  and  our  little  life 

Is  rounded  with  a  sleep." 

Here,  too,  all  the  elements  are  of  the 
plainest  and   commonest;    and  yet  these 


282         FRIENDS    ON   THE   SHELF 

few  short,  homely  words,  every  one  in  its 
natural  prose  order,  and  not  over-musi- 
cal, —  "such  stuff"  and  "little  life"  being 
almost  cacophonous,  —  have  a  magical 
force,  if  I  may  presume  for  once  to  speak 
in  Mr.  Swinburne's  tone,  unsurpassable  in 
the  whole  range  of  literature.  We  hear 
them,  if  we  do  hear  them,  and  all  things 
earthly  seem  to  melt  and  vanish. 

Not  unlike  them  in  their  sudden  effec- 
tiveness is  a  casual  expression  of  Burke's. 
For  in  prose  also,  and  even  in  a  politi- 
cal pamphlet,  if  the  pamphleteer  have  a 
genius  for  words,  an  inspired  and  unex- 
pected phrase  (and  inspired  phrases  are 
always  unexpected,  that  being  one  mark 
of  their  divinity)  may  take  the  spirit  cap- 
tive. Thus,  while  Burke  is  talking  about 
the  troubles  of  the  time,  being  now  in  the 
opposition,  and  blaming  the  government 
as  in  duty  bound,  suddenly  he  lets  fall  the 
words,  "Rank,  and  office,  and  title,  and 
all  the  solemn  plausibilities  of  the  world;" 
and  for  me,  I  know  not  whether  others 
may  be  similarly  affected,  politics  and 
government  are  gone,  an  "insubstantial 
pageant  faded."    "All  the  solemn  plausi- 


VERBAL    MAGIC  283 

bilities  of  the  world,"  I  say  to  myself,  and 
for  the  present,  though  I  am  hardly  beyond 
the  first  page  of  the  pamphlet,  I  care  not 
to  read  further;  like  Emerson  at  the  play, 
who  had  ears  for  nothing  more  after 
Hamlet's  question  to  the  ghost :  — 

"What  may  this  mean, 
That  thou,  dead  corse,  again  in  complete  steel 
Revisit 'st  thus  the  glimpses  of  the  moon?" 

I  am  writing  simply  as  a  lover  of 
poetry,  "uninstructed,  but  sensitive,"  not 
as  a  critic,  having  no  semblance  of  claim 
to  that  exalted  title, — among  the  very  high- 
est, to  my  thinking,  as  the  men  who  wear 
it  worthily  are  among  the  rarest ;  great 
critics,  to  this  date,  having  been  fewer  even 
than  great  poets;  but  I  believe,  or  think 
I  believe,  in  the  saying  of  one  of  the 
brightest  of  modern  Frenchmen:  "Le  bon 
critique  est  celui  qui  raconte  les  aventures 
de  son  ame  au  milieu  des  chefs-d'oeuvre." 
So  I  delight  in  this  adventure  of  Emerson's 
mind  in  the  midst  of  "Hamlet,"  as  I  do 
also  in  a  similar  one  of  Wordsworth's, 
who  was  wont  to  say,  as  reported  by  Haz- 
litt,  that  he  could  read  Milton's  description 
of  Satan  — 


284         FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

"Nor  appeared 
Less  than  Archangel  ruined,  and  the  excess 
Of  glory  obscured  "  — 

till  he  felt  "a  certain  faintness  come  over 
his  mind  from  a  sense  of  beauty  and 
grandeur." 

One  thing,  surely,  we  may  say  about 
verse  of  this  miraculous  quality:  it  does 
not  appeal  first  or  principally  to  the  ear; 
it  is  almost  never  rich  in  melodic  beauty, 
as  such  beauty  is  commonly  estimated. 
It  is  musical,  no  doubt,  but  after  a  secret 
manner  of  its  own.  Alliteration,  assonance, 
a  pleasing  alternation  and  interchange  of 
vowel  sounds,  all  such  crafty  niceties  are 
hidden,  if  not  absent  altogether,  —  so  com- 
pletely hidden  that  the  reader  never  thinks 
of  them  as  either  present  or  absent.*  The 
appeal  is  to  the  imagination,  not  to  the 
ear,  and  more  is  suggested  tlian  said. 
Such  lines,  along  with  their  simplicity  of 
language,  may  well  have  something  of  mys- 
teriousness.  Yet  they  must  not  puzzle  the 
mind.     The   mystery  must  not  be  of  the 

'  Is  there  a  possible  connection  between  this  fact  and  the 
further  one  that  really  magical  lines  are  seldom  or  never  to  be 
found  in  the  work  of  the  more  distinctively  musical  poets,  —  say 
in  Coleridge,  Shelley,  Tennyson,  and  Swinburne? 


VERBAL   MAGIC  285 

smaller  sort,  that  provokes  questions.  If 
the  curiosity  is  teased  in  the  slightest  to 
discover  what  the  words  mean,  the  spell 
is  broken.  There  is  no  enchantment  in  a 
riddle. 

Neither  is  there  charm  in  an  epigram, 
be  it  never  so  happy,  nor  in  any  conceit 
or  play  upon  words. 

"I  could  not  love  thee,  Dear!   so  much. 
Loved  I  not  Honor  more,"  — 

nothing  of  this  kind,  perfect  as  it  is,  will 
answer  the  test.  Mere  cleverness  might 
compass  a  thing  like  that.  Indeed,  the 
very  cleverness  of  it,  its  courtly  graceful- 
ness, its  manner  (one  seems  to  see  the  bod- 
ily inflection  and  the  wave  of  the  hand  that 
go  with  the  phrase),  the  spice  of  smartness 
in  it,  are  enough  to  remove  it  instantly  out 
of  the  magic  circle.  Magical  verse  is  neither 
pretty  nor  clever.  It  speaks  not  of  itself. 
If  you  think  of  it,  the  charm  has  failed. 

In  my  own  case,  in  lines  that  are 
magical  to  me,  the  suggestion  or  picture  is 
generally  of  something  remote  from  the 
present,  a  calling  up  of  deeds  long  done 
and   men  long  vanished,   or  else  a  fore- 


286         FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

boding  of  that  future  day  when  all  things 
will  be  past;  a  suggestion  or  picture  that 
brings  an  instant  soberness,  —  reverie, 
melancholy,  what  you  will,  —  that  is  the 
most  delicious  fruit  of  recollection.  It 
suits  with  this  idea  that  the  verse  has 
mostly  a  slow,  meditative  movement,  pro- 
duced, if  the  reader  chooses  to  pick  it  to 
pieces,  by  long  vowels  and  natural  pauses, 
or  by  final  and  initial  consonants  standing 
opposite  each  other,  and,  between  them, 
holding  the  words  apart;  such  a  movement 
as  that  of  the  Wordsworth  couplet  first 
quoted,  — 

"For  old,  unhappy,  far-off  things. 
And  battles  long  ago,"  — 

or  as  that  of  the  still  more  familiar  slow- 
running  line  from  the  sonnets  of  Shake- 
speare, — 

"Bare  ruin'd  choirs,  where  late  the  sweet  birds  sang,"  — 

a  movement  that  not  merely  harmonizes 
with  the  complexion  of  the  thought,  but 
heightens  it  to  an  extraordinary  degree. 
Not  that  the  poet  wrote  with  that  end 
consciously  in  view,  or  altered  a  syllable 
to   secure   it.      Wordsworth's   lines,    it   is 


VERBAL    MAGIC  287 

safe  guessing,  were  for  this  time  given 
to  him,  and  dropped  upon  the  paper  as 
they  are,  fauhless  beyond  even  his  too 
meddlesome  desire  to  alter  and  amend. 
Indeed,  in  this  as  in  all  the  best  verse, 
it  is  not  the  metrical  structure  that  pro- 
duces the  imaginative  result,  but  exactly 
the  opposite. 

And  here,  as  I  think,  we  may  gather  a 
hint  as  to  the  impassable  gulf  that  sepa- 
rates inspired  poetry  from  the  very  high- 
est verse  of  the  next  lower  order.  Take 
such  a  dainty  bit  of  musical  craftiness 
as  this,  the  first  that  offers  itself  for  the 
purpose :  — 

"The  splendor  falls  on  castle  walls 

And  snowy  summits  old  in  story: 
The  long  light  shakes  across  the  lakes. 

And  the  wild  cataract  leaps  in  glory. 
Blow,  bugle,  blow,  set  the  wild  echoes  flying. 
Blow,  bugle;  answer,  echoes,  dying,  dying,  dying." 

Admirable  after  its  kind,  a  kind  of  which 
it  might  seem  unfair  to  say  that  less  is 
meant  than  meets  the  ear;  but  set  it  be- 
side the  Wordsworth  couplet,  so  easy,  so 
simple,  — 

"Without  all  ornament,  itself  and  true,"  — 


288         FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

so  inevitable  and  yet  so  impossible.  One 
is  cheap  in  its  materials,  but  divine  in  its 
birth  and  in  its  effect;  the  other  is  made 
of  rare  and  costly  stuffs,  but  when  all  is 
done  it  is  made.  Though  it  sound  old- 
fashioned  to  say  so,  there  is  no  art  like 
inspiration. 

The  supreme  achievement  of  poetic 
genius  is  not  the  writing  of  beautiful  pas- 
sages, but  the  conception  and  evolution  of 
great  poems,  —  the  whole,  even  in  a  work 
of  the  imagination,  being  greater  than  any 
of  its  parts ;  but  poetic  inspiration  reaches 
its  highest  jet,  if  we  may  so  speak,  its 
ultimate  bloom,  in  occasional  lines  of  tran- 
scendent and,  as  human  judgment  goes, 
perfect  loveliness.  I  should  like  to  see  a 
rigorously  sifted  collection  of  such  frag- 
ments, an  anthology  of  magical  verse, 
nothing  less  than  magic  being  admitted. 
It  would  be  a  small  volume,  — 

"Infinite  riches  in  a  liUle  room;" 

but  it  would  need  an  inspired  reader  to 
make  it. 


QUOTABILITY 


QUOTABILITY 

There  is  a  kind  of  writing  by  which  the 
reader  is  led  along,  perhaps  hurried  along, 
if  it  be  a  narrative,  without  pause  from 
beginning  to  end.  Everything  follows  di- 
rectly from  what  has  gone  before ;  the 
mind  is  held  upon  the  same  level  of  inter- 
est; and  the  impression  produced  is,  as  it 
were,  a  single  impression.  There  is  another 
kind  of  writing,  which  brings  the  reader 
now  and  then  to  a  halt.  He  looks  up  from 
the  page,  perhaps,  fixing  his  eyes  upon 
vacancy,  and  turning  the  thought,  or  the 
expression  of  it,  over  in  his  mind;  or  he 
betakes  himself  to  a  book  of  extracts  and 
conveys  a  sentence  or  two  into  its  keeping; 
or,  possibly,  if  he  is  one  of  the  rare  ones 
who  buy  books  and  read  with  pencil  in 
hand,  he  may  indite  a  note  on  the  margin 
of  the  leaf,  or  at  least  set  a  mark  there,  — 
as  one  blazes  a  tree  at  the  foot  of  which  trea- 
sure is  buried.  The  author  has  said  some- 
thing,—  something    in    particular,    fresh, 


292         FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

surprising,  original;  something  that  seems 
to  have  come  from  his  own  mind;  a  thing 
to  be  pondered  over  and  returned  upon. 
For  the  moment  there  is  no  going  further; 
the  reader  has  turned  thinker,  or  is  lost 
in  a  dream.  It  is  as  if  a  man  had  been 
walking  down  a  pleasant  road  bordered 
with  hedges  and  fields,  one  much  like 
another,  and  now  of  a  sudden  has  rounded 
a  corner,  and  sees  before  him  a  lake  or 
a  waterfall,  something  new,  different,  un- 
expected, at  the  sight  of  which  he  stops 
as  by  instinct.  Or  you  may  say,  it  is  as 
if  a  man  had  been  traveling  steadily  for- 
ward, thinking  only  of  his  journey's  end, 
and  all  at  once  catches  the  shine  of  a  gold 
piece  in  the  path,  or  sees  by  the  wayside  a 
flower  so  novel  and  beautiful  that  it  must 
be  stepped  aside  for  and  looked  at. 

We  have  had  in  America  tliree  writers, 
living  in  the  same  country  village  at  the 
same  time,  who  exemplified  in  a  really 
striking  manner  these  two  styles  of  writ- 
ing: Hawthorne  on  the  one  hand,  and 
Emerson  and  Thoreau  on  the  other. 

Hawthorne's  work  you  may  read  from 
end    to    end    without    the    temptation    to 


QUOTABILITY  293 

transfer  so  much  as  a  line  to  the  com- 
monplace book.  The  road  has  taken  you 
through  many  interesting  scenes,  and  past 
many  a  beautiful  landscape ;  you  may 
have  felt  much  and  learned  much;  you 
might  be  glad  to  turn  back  straightway 
and  travel  the  course  over  again;  but  you 
will  have  picked  up  no  coin  or  jewel  to 
put  away  in  a  cabinet.  This  characteris- 
tic of  Hawthorne  is  the  more  noteworthy 
because  of  the  moral  quality  of  his  work. 
A  mere  story-teller  may  naturally  keep  his 
narrative  on  the  go,  as  we  say,  —  that  is 
one  of  the  chief  secrets  of  his  art;  but 
Hawthorne  was  not  a  mere  story-teller. 
He  was  a  moralist,  —  Emerson  himself 
hardly  more  so;  yet  he  has  never  a  moral 
sentence.  The  fact  is,  he  did  not  make 
sentences;  he  made  books.  The  story,  not 
the  sentence,  nor  even  the  paragraph  or 
the  chapter,  was  the  unit.  The  general 
truth  —  the  moral  —  informed  the  work. 
Not  only  was  it  not  affixed  as  a  label;  it 
was  not  given  anywhere  a  direct  and 
separable  verbal  expression.  If  the  story 
does  not  convey  it  to  you,  you  will  never 
get   it.    Hawthorne,  in   short,  was  what, 


294        FRIENDS    ON   THE  SHELF 

for  lack  of  a  better  word,  we  may  call  a 
literary  artist. 

Emerson  and  Thoreau,  on  the  other 
hand,  were  journalizers.  Their  life  was 
not  to  create,  but  to  think,  to  see,  to  read, 
and  to  set  down  the  results  of  it  all, 
day  by  day.  When  Emerson  would  make 
a  piece  of  literature,  —  a  lecture,  or  an 
essay,  or  even  a  book,  —  he  sought  out 
related  paragraphs  from  his  diary,  dove- 
tailed them  together,  disguising  tlie  joints 
more  or  less  successfully,  as  might  happen, 
—  it  was  no  great  matter,  —  added  col- 
lateral ideas  as  they  occurred  to  him,  and 
the  job  was  done.  It  was  done  the  more 
easily  because  the  journal  was  not  a  re- 
ceptacle for  impressions  hastily  noted. 
Sentence  and  paragraph  had  been  assid- 
uously finished  to  a  word,  turned  this  way 
and  that  and  settled  finally  into  shape, 
before  they  went  into  it;  for  a  journal, 
with  him,  was  not  a  collection  of  rough 
jewels,  but  a  drawer  full  of  pearls  and 
precious  stones,  each  carefully  cut  and 
polished,  ready  for  the  setting  or  the  string. 

And  what  was  true  of  Emerson  was 
true  in  good  degree  of  Thoreau,  who  fol- 


QUOTABILITY  295 

lowed  the  same  general  method,  but  with 
a  less  pronounced  and  continuous  effect 
of  discontinuity:  partly,  it  would  appear, 
because  of  a  difference  in  the  turn  of  his 
mind  (more  given  to  reason,  and  less  to 
intuition),  and  partly  because  of  the  nar- 
rative form  into  which  his  natural  his- 
torical bent  almost  of  necessity  carried 
him,  —  a  form  by  which  pages  and  whole 
chapters  of  his  work  are  held  pretty  closely 
together. 

If  with  Hawthorne  we  put  Irving,  — 
who  was  like  him  so  far  as  the  point  now 
under  consideration  is  concerned,  fluidity 
of  style  and  an  absence  of  "passages," 
—  we  have  four  of  our  American  classics 
in  well-contrasted  pairs.  One  pair,  we 
may  say,  did  work  that  was  like  tapestry, 
woven  throughout;  the  other's  product 
was  rather  like  patchwork,  —  composed 
of  rare  and  valuable  stuff,  but  still  patch- 
work. 

This  comparison,  be  it  understood,  is 
not  to  be  taken  as  an  attempt  to  settle 
^  question  of  comparative  rank.  A  con- 
trast is  not  of  itself  an  appraisal,  nor  a 
figure  of  speech  an  end  of  the  argument. 


296         FRIENDS   ON   THE   SHELF 

And  after  all,  if  figures  of  speech  are  to  be 
regarded,  a  floor  of  tiles  may  be  as  beau- 
tiful, and  even  as  "artistic,"  as  the  finest 
of  woven  carpets.  Let  comparisons  go. 
We  may  study  differences  without  exalt- 
ing one  or  depreciating  another.  Of  the 
four  writers  now  named,  we  are  not  to  say 
that  any  one  was  greater  than  all  the 
rest.  Each  had  his  superiorities  and  his 
inferiorities,  the  second  necessary  concom- 
itants of  the  first ;  for  every  virtue  casts  its 
shadow. 

Emerson,  for  his  part,  seems  to  have 
been  keenly  aware  of  the  disconnectedness 
of  his  work, — his  "formidable  tendency 
to  the  lapidary  style,"  he  terms  it,  —  and 
even  to  have  accepted  it  as  a  defect.  "I 
dot  evermore  in  my  endless  journal,  a  line 
on  every  knowable  in  nature,"  he  writes 
to  Carlyle;  "but  the  arrangement  loiters 
long,  and  I  get  a  brick-kiln  instead  of  a 
house."  That  was  one  face  of  the  medal; 
but  his  "bricks"  are  now  of  more  value 
than  many  another  man's  streetful  of  build- 
ings. 

Thoreau,  though  he  too  had  his  humble 
moods,   was   in  general   more   self-reliant 


QUOTABILITY  297 

—  or  at  least  more  self-assertive  —  than 
his  older  friend  and  master.  He  believed 
in  the  "lapidary  style,"  or  in  some  whole- 
some approach  to  it;  and  what  he  believed 
in  he  would  stand  up  for.  "We  hear  it 
complained  of  some  works  of  genius,"  he 
says,  "that  they  have  fine  thoughts,  but 
are  irregular  and  have  no  flow.  But  even 
the  mountain  peaks  on  the  horizon  are,  to 
the  eye  of  science,  parts  of  one  range."  He 
is  defending  Emerson,  —  though  he  does 
not  name  him,  —  and,  indirectly,  himself; 
and  with  the  same  end  in  view  he  goes 
on  to  praise  Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  whose 
style,  he  says,  has  a  natural  emphasis,  like 
a  man's  tread,  "  and  a  breathing  space 
between  the  sentences."  And  he  declares, 
correctly  enough,  that  what  the  ignorant 
applaud  as  a  "flow"  of  style  is  much  of  it 
nothing  but  a  "rapid  trot." 

One  thing  is  certain:  a  man  must  work 
according  to  his  own  method.  For  him 
that  is  the  best  method,  and  indeed  the 
only  one.  Carlyle  entreated  Emerson  to 
"become  concrete,  and  write  in  prose  the 
straightest  way."  "I  wish  you  would  take 
an  American  Hero,  one  whom  you  really 


298         FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

love;  and  give  us  a  History  of  him, — make 
an  artistic  bronze  statue  (in  good  words) 
of  his  Life  and  him.  I  do  indeed."  Tho- 
reau's  appeal  to  Emerson  is  for  exactly  the 
opposite :  less  art,  if  need  be,  and  less  con- 
creteness,  but  more  "far-off  heats,"  more 
"star-dust  and  undissolvable  nebulae."  To 
that  end  he  turns  Emerson's  own  verse 
against  him.    "From  his 

'lips  of  cunning  fell 
The  thrilling  Delphic  oracle.' 

And  yet  sometimes, — 

We  should  not  mind  if  on  our  ear  there  fell 
Some  less  of  cunning,  more  of  oracle." 

Clever  critics,  both  of  them,  the  Scotch- 
man and  the  Yankee;  but  meanwhile, 
between  the  two  fires,  Emerson  kept  on 
polishing  pearls  and  cutting  cameos,  with 
hardly  so  much  as  an  attempt  at  an  "ar- 
tistic bronze  statue."  The  author  of  the 
essay  on  "  Self -Reliance  "  knew  that  a  man 
must  work  with  his  own  mind,  as  he  must 
wear  his  own  face;  that  no  method  is  so 
good  or  so  bad  but  that  it  may  be  damaged 
by  an  attempt  to  make  it  as  good  as  an- 
other's. 


QUOTABILITY  299 

And  admirable  as  artistic  perfection  and 
absolute  unity  are,  there  remains  a  place, 
and  a  high  place,  for  works  of  another 
order.  All  the  world,  even  the  stickler 
for  classical  perfection,  loves  a  good  sen- 
tence. Blessed  is  the  writer  who  now  and 
then  makes  one.  We  forgive  him  for  care-' 
lessness  of  construction,  and,  almost,  for 
every  other  literary  fault,  if  once  in  a  while 
—  not  too  infrequently  —  he  packs  wit  or 
wisdom  into  a  score  or  so  of  memorable 
words. 

In  speaking  of  a  quotable  style,  we  are 
not  thinking  of  works  like  the  Wisdom  of 
Solomon,  the  Meditations  of  Marcus  Au- 
relius,  and  the  Thoughts  of  Pascal  and 
Joubert,  books  that  are  nothing  but  collec- 
tions of  maxims  and  aphorisms;  nor  even 
of  books  like  Bacon's  Essays  or  Amiel's 
Journal,  that  come  near  to  falling  under 
the  same  head.  To  find  a  happy  and  preg- 
nant sentence  in  such  a  place  is  like  tak- 
ing an  apple  out  of  a  dish  and  eating  it  at 
the  table;  to  run  upon  one  in  the  <reading 
of  a  hook  is  like  plucking  an  apple  from 
a  wayside  tree  in  the  midst  of  a  half-day 
ramble,   and   munching   it    on    the   road. 


300         FRIENDS   ON   THE    SHELF 

The  fruit  may  be  as  fair  and  well-flavored 
in  the  first  case  as  in  the  second,  but  what 
a  difference  in  the  relish  of  it!  It  is  one 
thing  to  receive  a  coin  over  the  banker's 
counter,  and  another  to  pick  a  nugget 
out  of  the  gravel.  In  reading,  as  well  as 
anywhere  else,  a  man  enjoys  the  thrill  of 
discovery. 

Here,  in  great  part,  lies  the  enduring 
charm  of  an  author  like  Montaigne,  who 
wrote  without  plan,  rambling  at  his  own 
sweet  will,  never  sticking  to  his  text,  and 
never  so  much  as  dreaming  of  unity  or 
anything  else  that  could  be  called  "ar- 
tistic," yet  making  a  book  to  live  forever. 
As  Sainte-Beuve  says,  you  may  open  it 
at  what  page  you  will,  and  be  in  what 
mood  you  may,  and  you  are  sure  to  find 
a  wise  thought  expressed  in  lively  and 
durable  phrase,  a  beautiful  meaning  set  in 
a  single  strong  line.  And  the  best  of  it  all 
is  that  these  fine  sentences,  so  detachable 
and  memorable,  are  written  like  all  the 
rest  of  the  essay,  and  are  part  and  parcel 
of  it.  No  attention  is  called  to  them; 
they  call  no  attention  to  themselves.  They 
drop  on  the  page,  and  the  pen  runs  on. 


QUOTABILITY  SOI 

Seemingly,  it  was  as  easy  for  the  writer  to 
set  down  a  "durable"  phrase  —  done  once 
for  all  and  past  all  bettering  —  as  to  men- 
tion the  kind  of  fish  he  preferred  or  any 
other  trivial  every-day  matter.  His  good 
things  are  never  tainted  with  smartness, 
the  besetting  vice  of  sentence-makers  in 
general,  nor  have  they  at  all  the  appear- 
ance of  things  designed  to  nudge  the 
reader,  to  keep  him  awake,  as  if  the  writer 
had  said  to  himself,  "  Go  to,  let  us  brighten 
up  the  discussion  a  bit." 

A  gift  of  this  sort  comes  mostly  by  na- 
ture, but  no  one  ever  wrote  much  and  well 
without  arriving  at  some  pretty  definite 
notions  as  to  the  art  of  writing;  and  so 
it  was  with  Montaigne.  If  his  style  was 
discursive,  formless,  highly  sententious, 
and  yet  to  an  extraordinary  degree  fa- 
miliar, he  was  not  only  aware  of  the  fact, 
but  gloried  in  it.  He  loved  a  natural  and 
plain  way  of  speaking,  he  tells  us;  the 
same  on  paper  as  in  the  mouth;  juicy  and 
sinewy  (succulent  et  nerveux),  irregular, 
incontinuous  and  bold,  every  piece  a  body 
by  itself,  —  "a  soldier-like  style."  Fine 
words  he  had  no  place  for.    "May  I  never 


302         FRIENDS    ON   THE   SHELF 

use  any  other  language  than  what  is  used 
in  the  markets  of  Paris!"  he  exclaims. 
As  for  mere  rhetoric,  he  held  it  cheap, 
as  every  good  writer  does.  Word  paint- 
ing, no  matter  how  well  done,  is  "easily 
obscured  by  the  lustre  of  a  simple  truth." 
But  a  good  sentence,  a  thing  worth  saying 
and  well  said,  he  believed  to  be  always 
in  order.  "If  it  is  not  good  for  what  went 
before  nor  for  what  comes  after,  it  is 
good  in  itself."  He  praises  Tacitus  for 
being  "full  of  sentences."  And  therein, 
perhaps,  as  in  Thoreau's  eulogy  of  Sir 
Walter  Raleigh,  we  may  see  the  author 
defending  his  own  practice.  There  is  no 
neater  way  of  speaking  well  of  ourselves 
than  by  complimenting  our  own  special 
virtues  in  the  person  of  another.  In  truth, 
however,  Montaigne  had  no  need  to  apolo- 
gize even  with  indirectness.  His  "good 
sentences"  are  not  only  good  in  them- 
selves, but  good  for  what  precedes  and 
follows.  They  are  never  stuck  on  nor 
tlirust  in.  On  the  contrary,  as  has  been 
already  observed,  they  are  sure  to  be  part 
of  the  very  substance  of  the  essay  itself. 
You  will  never  find  Montaigne  writing  or 


QUOTABILITY  303 

retaining  a  paragraph  for  the  sake  of  its 
snapper,  Hke  those  authors  of  whom  he 
said  that  they  would  "go  a  mile  out  of 
their  way  to  run  after  a  fine  word." 

There  is  a  natural  relation,  it  would 
seem,  between  a  quotable  style  and  a  fond- 
ness for  quoting.  If  a  man's  own  thought 
falls  easily  into  well-minted,  separable 
phrases,  he  will  almost  of  course  be  ap- 
preciative of  similar  aphoristic  turns  of 
speech  in  the  works  of  others.  So  we  find 
Montaigne's  pages  bespattered  from  top 
to  bottom  with  extracts  from  the  philo- 
sophers and  poets  of  an  older  time.  As 
years  passed,  and  successive  editions  of 
the  book  were  published,  the  quotations 
grew  more  and  more  numerous,  till  some 
of  the  essays  seemed  in  danger  of  losing 
their  identity  and  becoming  hardly  more 
than  leaves  out  of  a  commonplace  book. 

And  as  it  was  with  the  Frenchman,  so 
was  it  with  our  two  Concord  philosophers, 
Emerson  and  Thoreau.  They  were  almost 
as  fond  of  others'  bright  things  as  of  their 
own.  And  the  same  may  be  said  of  their 
contemporary  and  critic,  Lowell,  who,  like 
them,  was  also  a  master  of  the  phrase,  a 


304         FRIENDS   ON   THE    SHELF 

putter  forth  of  "stamped  sentences,"  like 
gold  and  silver  coins,  as  one  of  his  ad- 
mirers has  called  them.  He,  too,  is  always 
offering  us  a  nugget  out  of  another  man's 
pack.  All  three  of  these  men,  be  it  added, 
borrowed  not  only  with  freedom,  but  with 
great  advantage  to  their  own  work.  They 
had  a  right  to  borrow,  being  in  good  mea- 
sure original  in  their  very  quotations,  be- 
cause, as  has  been  remarked  of  Montaigne, 
*'  they  employed  them  only  when  they  found 
in  them  an  idea  of  their  own,  or  had  been 
struck  by  them  in  a  new  and  singular 
manner." 

But  what  a  change  when  we  turn  to 
Hawthorne!  His  work  is  all  of  a  piece, 
woven  in  his  own  loom.  As  nobody  quotes 
him,  so  he  quotes  nobody.  Inverted  com- 
mas are  as  scarce  on  his  pages  as  Novem- 
ber violets  are  in  the  Concord  meadows. 
You  will  find  them,  but  you  will  have  to 
search  for  them.  On  Thoreau's  page  they 
are  thick  as  violets  in  May. 

We  were  not  undertaking  to  determine 
rank  or  to  appraise  values,  we  said,  but 
so  much  as  this  we  will  venture  upon 
suggesting :    that  a  piece   of  pure  art  — 


QUOTABILITY  305 

"The  Scarlet  Letter,"  if  you  will  —  is  not 
on  that  ground  alone  to  be  considered 
as  worthier  in  itself,  or  better  assured  of 
lasting  honor,  than  some  work  less  per- 
fectly constructed,  but,  it  may  be,  more 
nobly  inspired.  In  the  final  result  of 
things,  literary  merit  and  literary  fame 
are  not  portioned  out  by  any  critical  yard- 
stick. Lowell  complained  of  Thoreau 
that  "he  had  no  artistic  power  such  as 
controls  a  great  work  to  the  serene  bal- 
ance of  completeness."  True  enough. 
It  is  the  same  criticism  which  Carlyle, 
and  Arnold  after  him,  brought  against 
Emerson;  in  whose  case,  also,  we  need 
not  dispute  the  point.  But  Lowell  said 
further  of  Thoreau,  "His  work  gives  me 
the  feeling  of  a  sky  full  of  stars;"  and 
again:  "As  we  read  him,  it  seems  as  if 
all-out-of-doors  had  kept  a  diary  and  be- 
come its  own  Montaigne.  .  .  .  Compared 
with  his,  all  other  books  of  similar  aim, 
even  Wliite's  'Selborne,'  seem  dry  as  a 
country  clergyman's  meteorological  jour- 
nal in  an  old  almanac."  In  other  words, 
Thoreau  was  not  an  artist,  but  he  did 
something   new,    and   something   grandly 


306         FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

worth  doing.  Emerson,  likewise,  was  not 
an  artist;  but  the  critic  who  tells  us  so 
tells  us  in  the  same  breath  that  Emerson's 
essays  are  the  most  important  work  done 
in  English  prose  during  their  century. 

Whether  Emerson  will  outlive  Haw- 
thorne, or  Hawthorne  outlive  Emerson, 
who  can  say.?  It  would  be  rash  guessing 
to  attempt  a  prophecy.  As  for  Thoreau, 
there  are  some,  perhaps,  who  would  bid 
higher  for  his  chance  of  immortality  than 
for  that  of  either  of  his  two  famous  towns- 
men. 

Let  such  things  turn  out  as  they  may, 
Emerson  and  Thoreau  have  each  given 
to  American  literature,  and  better  still  to 
American  life,  something  that  can  never 
be  lost,  even  though  their  works  and 
their  names  together  should  be  forgot- 
ten; and  they  have  done  this  partly  by 
reason  of  their  very  limitations,  their 
making  of  sentences  and  paragraphs  — 
portable  wisdom  —  instead  of  "  artistic 
bronze  statues."  "Wisdom  is  the  princi- 
pal thing,"  said  an  ancient  writer;  and  an 
English  critic  and  statesman  of  our  own 
day  has  uttered  the  same  truth   in  more 


QUOTABILITY  307 

modern  fashion.  "Aphorism  or  maxim," 
says  Mr.  John  Morley,  "let  us  remember 
that  this  wisdom  of  Hfe  is  the  true  salt 
of  literature;  that  those  books,  at  least 
in  prose,  are  most  nourishing  which  are 
most  richly  stored  with  it;  and  that  it 
is  one  of  the  main  objects,  apart  from 
the  mere  acquisition  of  knowledge,  which 
men  ought  to  seek  in  the  reading  of 
books." 

Yes,  and  it  is  one  of  the  objects  that 
men  do  seek;  for  the  history  of  literature 
proves  abundantly  that  the  world  keeps  a 
relish  for  that  which  feeds  the  soul  as  well 
as  for  that  which  ministers  to  the  pas- 
sion for  beauty;  if  it  crowns  the  literary 
artist,  it  has  a  wreath  also  for  his  hum- 
bler brother  —  if  he  is  humbler  —  the 
originator  and  disseminator  of  thought. 
For  it  is  to  be  considered  that  a  man  with 
a  genius  for  writing  is  not  therefore  a 
man  of  original  ideas,  or  indeed,  so  far 
as  the  necessity  of  the  case  goes,  of  any 
ideas  at  all.  His  gift  may  be  —  nay,  per- 
haps is  likely  to  be  —  purely  artistic  and 
literary,  a  faculty  for  seeing  and  describ- 
ing.   Thus  we  read  of  Sterne  that  he  was 


308         FRIENDS   ON   THE   SHELF 

a  great  author,  "not  because  of  great 
thoughts,  for  there  is  scarcely  a  sentence 
in  his  writings  which  can  be  called  a 
thought,  .  .  .  but  because  of  his  wonder- 
ful sympathy  with  and  wonderful  power 
of  representing  simple  human  nature." 
Obviously,  it  is  not  to  such  as  he  that  we 
are  to  go  in  search  of  wisdom.  The  man 
who  furnishes  us  with  that  commodity, 
the  quotable  man,  be  his  rank  higher  or 
lower,  is  one  who  thinks,  or,  lacking  that, 
has  an  instinct  for  the  discovery  and  ex- 
pression of  thought,  —  a  man  under  the 
friction  of  whose  pen  ideas  crystallize  into 
handy  and  final  shape,  and  so  become 
current  coin. 


THE   GRACE  OF  OBSCURITY 


THE   GRACE  OF  OBSCURITY 

Clearness,  directness,  ease,  precision,  — ■ 
these  are  literary  virtues  of  a  homely  and 
primary  sort.  Reserve,  urbanity,  depth, 
force,  suggestiveness,  —  these,  too,  are  vir- 
tues, and  happy  the  writer  who  has  them. 
He  is  master  of  his  art. 

No  good  workman  likes  to  be  praised 
overmuch  for  the  elementary  qualities.  Let 
some  things  be  taken  for  granted,  or 
touched  upon  lightly.  Tell  a  schoolboy 
that  he  writes  grammatically,  —  if  you  can, 
—  but  not  the  editor  of  a  newspaper.  Al- 
most as  well  confide  to  your  banker  that 
you  hold  him  for  something  better  than  a 
thief.  "Simplicity  be  cursed!"  a  sensitive 
writer  used  to  exclaim,  as  book  after  book 
elicited  the  same  good-natured  verdict. 
"They  mean  that  I  am  simple,  easily  seen 
through.  Henceforth  I  will  be  muddy,  see- 
ing it  is  beyond  me  to  be  deep."  But  na- 
ture is  inexorable,  and  with  the  next  book 
it  was  the  same  story.    Probably  there  is 


312         FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

not  a  line  of  his  work  oyer  which  any  two 
readers  ever  disputed  as  to  its  meaning. 
In  vain  shall  such  a  man  dream  of  im- 
mortality. Great  books,  books  to  which 
readers  return,  books  that  win  vogue  and 
maintain  it,  books  for  the  study  of  which 
societies  are  organized  and  about  which 
libraries  accumulate,  must  be  of  a  less 
flimsy  texture,  —  in  his  own  testy  phrase, 
less  "easily  seen  through.'* 

Consider  the  great  classics  of  all  races, 
the  Bibles  of  the  world.  Not  one  but 
abounds  in  dark  sayings.  What  another 
book  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  would  be  if 
the  same  text  could  never  be  interpreted 
in  more  than  one  way,  if  some  texts  could 
ever  be  interpreted  at  all!  How  much  less 
matter  for  preaching!  How  much  less  mo- 
tive for  exegetical  research!  And  withal, 
how  much  less  appeal  to  the  deepest  of 
human  instincts,  the  passion  for  the  vague, 
the  far  away,  and  the  mysterious! 

All  religious  teachers,  in  so  far  as  they 
are  competent  and  sincere,  address  them- 
selves to  this  instinct.  The  worthier  they 
are  of  their  calling,  the  better  do  they  ap- 
preciate the  value  of  paradox  and  parable. 


THE   GRACE   OF   OBSCURITY      313 

Tlie  greatest  of  them  made  open  profes- 
sion of  his  purpose  to  speak  over  the  heads 
of  his  hearers;  and  his  followers  are  still 
true  to  his  example  in  that  particular,  how- 
ever they  may  have  improved  upon  it  in 
other  respects.  They  no  longer  encourage 
evil  by  turning  the  other  cheek  to  the 
smiter;  not  many  of  them  foster  indolence 
by  selling  all  that  they  have  and  giving  to 
the  poor;  but  without  exception  they  speak 
things  hard  to  be  understood.  Therein, 
in  part  at  least,  lies  their  power;  for  man- 
kind craves  a  religion,  a  revelation  of  the 
unseen  and  the  unprovable,  and  is  not  to 
be  put  off  with  simple  morality,  with  such 
commonplace  and  worldly  things  as  hon- 
esty, industry,  purity,  and  brotherly  love. 
No  church  ever  waxed  great  by  the  incul- 
cation of  these  humble,  earthly,  every-day 
virtues. 

In  literature,  the  value  of  half-lights  is 
recognized,  consciously  or  not,  by  all  who 
dabble  in  foreign  tongues.  Indeed,  so  far, 
at  least,  as  amateurs  are  concerned,  it  is 
one  of  the  chief  encouragements  to  lin- 
guistic studies,  the  heightened  pleasure  of 
reading  in  a  language  but  half  understood. 


314         FRIENDS   ON   THE   SHELF 

The  imagination  is  put  freshly  in  play, 
and  time-worn  thoughts  and  too  famil- 
iar sentiments  are  again  almost  as  good 
as  new.  Doudan,  writing  to  a  friend  in 
trouble,  drops  suddenly  into  English,  with 
a  sentence  or  two  about  the  universality  of 
misfortune.  "Commonplaces  regain  their 
truth  in  a  strange  language,"  he  explains; 
*'if  we  complain  of  ordinary  evils,  we  ought 
to  do  it  in  Latin."  The  hint  is  worth  tak- 
ing. So  long  as  we  have  something  novel 
and  important  to  communicate,  we  may 
choose  the  simplest  words.  "Clearness  is 
the  ornament  of  profound  thoughts,"  says 
Vauvenargues ;  but  we  need  not  go  quite  so 
far  as  the  same  philosopher  when  he  bids 
us  reject  all  thoughts  that  are  "too feeble  to 
bear  a  simple  expression."  That  would  be 
to  reduce  the  literary  product  unduly.  Jou- 
bert  is  a  more  comforting  adviser.  "Banish 
from  words  all  uncertainty  of  meaning,"  he 
says,  "and  you  have  made  an  end  of  poetry 
and  eloquence."  "  It  is  a  great  art,"  he  adds, 
"the  art  of  being  agreeably  ambiguous." 
Such  tributes  to  the  vague  are  the  more 
significant  as  coming  from  Frenchmen, 
who,  of  all  people,  may  be  said  to  worship 


THE   GRACE   OF   OBSCURITY      315 

lucidity.  Let  us  add,  then,  the  testimony 
of  one  of  the  younger  French  writers,  a 
man  of  our  own  day.  "Humanity  hardly 
attaches  itself  with  passion  to  any  works  of 
poetry  and  art,"  says  M.  Anatole  France, 
"unless  some  parts  of  them  are  obscure 
and  susceptible  of  diverse  interpretations.'* 
And  in  another  place  in  the  same  volume 
("  Le  Jardin  d' Epicure  ")  we  come  upon  this 
fine  saying:  "What  life  has  of  the  best  is 
the  idea  it  gives  us  of  an  unknown  some- 
thing which  is  not  in  it."  How  true  that 
is  of  literature,  also!  The  best  thing  we 
derive  from  a  book  is  something  that  the 
author  never  quite  succeeded  in  putting 
into  it.  Wliat  good  reader  (and  without 
good  reading  there  is  no  good  writing)  has 
not  found  a  glimpse,  a  momentary  bright- 
ness as  of  something  infinitely  far  off,  more 
exciting  and  memorable  than  whole  pages 
of  crystalline  description.^ 

Vagueness  like  this  is  one  of  the  noblest 
gifts  of  a  writer.  Artifice  cannot  compass  it. 
If  a  man  would  have  it,  let  him  pray  for  a 
soul,  and  refresh  himself  continually  with 
dreams  and  high  imaginings.  Then  if,  in 
addition,  he  have  genius,  knowledge,  and 


316         FRIENDS    ON   THE   SHELF 

literary  tact,  there  may  be  hope  for  him. 
But  even  then  the  page  must  find  the  reader. 

Of  vagueness  of  a  lower  order  there  is 
always  plenty;  some  of  it  a  matter  of  indi- 
vidual temperament,  some  of  it  a  matter  of 
art,  and  some  a  matter  of  a  want  of  art.  It 
is  not  to  be  despised,  perhaps,  since  it  has 
utility  and  a  marketable  value.  It  results 
in  the  formation  of  clubs,  and  so  is  promo- 
tive of  social  intercourse.  It  makes  it  worth 
men's  while  to  read  the  same  book  twice, 
or  even  thrice,  and  so  is  of  use  in  reliev- 
ing the  tedium  of  the  world.  It  renders 
unspeakable  service  to  worthy  people  who 
would  fain  have  a  fine  taste  in  literature, 
but  for  whom,  as  yet,  it  is  more  absorbing 
to  guess  riddles  than  to  read  poems;  and  it 
is  almost  as  good  as  a  corruption  of  the 
text  to  the  favored  few  who  have  an  eye  for 
invisible  meanings,  —  men  like  the  famous 
French  philosopher  who  discovered  extraor- 
dinary beauty  in  certain  profundities  of 
Pascal,  which  turned  out  to  be  errors  of  a 
copyist. 

This  inferior  kind  of  obscurity,  like  most 
things  of  a  secondary  rank,  is  open  to  cul- 
tivation, although  the  greater  number  of 


THE   GRACE   OF   OBSCURITY      317 

those  who  profit  by  such  husbandry  are  slow 
to  acknowledge  the  obligation.  A  bright 
exception  is  found  in  Thoreau.  He  Was 
one  who  believed  in  telling  the  truth.  "I 
do  not  suppose  that  I  have  attained  to  ob- 
scurity," he  writes.  But  he  was  too  modest 
by  half.  He  did  attain  to  it,  and  in  both 
kinds  :  sometimes  in  willful  paradox  and 
exaggeration,  a  sort  of  "Come,  now,  good 
reader,  no  falling  asleep!"  and  sometimes, 
but  less  often,  —  for  such  visitations  are 
rare  with  the  best  of  men,  —  in  some  quick, 
unstudied  phrase  that  opens,  as  it  were,  an 
unsuspected  door  within  us,  and  makes  us 
forget  for  the  time  being  both  the  author 
and  his  book. 

Perhaps  it  would  be  true  to  say  that  when 
men  are  most  inspired,  their  speech  be- 
comes most  like  Nature's  own,  —  inartic- 
ulate, and  so  capable  of  expressing  things 
inexpressible.  Wliat  book,  what  line  of 
verse,  ever  evoked  those  unutterable  feel- 
ings —  feelings  beyond  even  the  thought 
of  utterance  —  that  are  wakened  in  us 
now  and  then,  in  divinely  favorable  mo- 
ments, by  the  plash  of  waters  or  the  sigh- 
ing of  winds  ?  When  an  author  does  aught 


318         FRIENDS   ON   THE   SHELF 

of  this  kind  for  us,  we  must  love  and  praise 
him,  let  his  shortcomings  be  what  they 
will.  If  a  man  is  great  enough  in  himself, 
or  serviceable  enough  to  us,  we  need  not 
insist  upon  all  the  minor  perfections. 

For  the  rest,  these  things  remain  true: 
language  is  the  work  of  the  people,  and 
belongs  to  the  people,  however  lexicogra- 
phers and  grammarians  may  codify,  and 
possibly,  in  rare  instances,  improve  it. 
Commonplaces  are  the  staple  of  literature. 
The  great  books  appeal  to  men  as  men, 
not  as  scholars.  A  fog  is  not  a  cloud,  though 
a  man  with  his  feet  in  the  mud  may  hug 
himself  and  say,  "Look,  how  I  soar!" 
Preciosity  is  good  for  those  that  like  it; 
they  have  their  reward;  but  to  set  up  a 
conventicle,  with  passwords  and  a  private 
creed,  is  not  to  found  a  religion.  In  the 
long  run,  nothing  is  supremely  beautiful 
but  genuine  simplicity,  which  may  be  a 
perfection  of  nature  or  the  perfection  of 
art;  and  the  only  obscurity  that  suits  with 
it  and  sets  it  off  is  occasional,  unexpected, 
momentary,  —  a  sudden  excess  of  light 
that  flashes  and  is  gone,  surprising  the 
writer  first,  and  afterward  the  reader. 


IN  DEFENSE  OF  THE  TRAV- 
ELER'S NOTE-BOOK 


IN  DEFENSE  OF  THE  TRAV- 
ELER'S  NOTE-BOOK 

It  is  a  more  or  less  common  habit  of 
Americans  to  cry  out  against  the  conceit 
of  foreigners,  Englishmen  especially,  who, 
after  a  run  through  "the  States,"  publish 
their  impressions  of  the  country.  These 
outcries  —  though  that  may  seem  too 
strong  a  word  —  are  supposed  to  be  quite 
independent  of  the  character  of  the  com- 
ments in  question,  whether  favorable  or 
unfavorable.  In  the  tourist's  eyes,  Ameri- 
cans may  be  an  uninteresting,  boastful, 
worldly-minded  people.  The  magnitude 
of  our  lakes  may  not  blind  him  to  the 
imperfections  of  our  newspapers,  and  in 
spite  of  Niagara  and  the  prairies,  he  may 
esteem  our  politicians,  for  the  most  part, 
a  vulgar  and  time-serving  set.  Whatever 
criticisms  of  this  sort  he  in  his  unwisdom 
may  feel  called  upon  to  express  are  likely 
to  have  their  modicum  of  truth;  at  least 
they  would  have,  if  any  one  but  a  foreigner 


322         FRIENDS   ON   THE   SHELF 

were  to  utter  them.  Americans  are  not 
slow  to  say  similar  things  of  each  other, 
and  especially  of  their  public  men.  Except 
on  the  Fourth  of  July,  we  are  far  from 
constituting  anything  fairly  to  be  called 
a  mutual  admiration  society.  The  com- 
plaint, then,  is  not  that  the  tourist  offers 
criticism  of  such  and  such  a  tenor,  but 
that  he  takes  it  upon  himself  to  offer 
any  criticism  at  all.  What  business  has 
he  with  "impressions  of  America"  after  a 
visit  of  a  month  or  two  ?  And  even  if  he 
has  impressions,  why  should  he  be  so  pre- 
sumptuous as  to  print  them  ?  A  great 
people  cannot  be  understood  after  this 
haphazard,  percursory  fashion.  True;  but 
the  objection  is  futile,  if  for  no  other  rea- 
son, because  it  goes  wide  of  the  mark.  The 
question  is  not  of  understanding  a  people, 
but  of  having  something  to  say  about  them. 
Since  the  world  began,  men  have  trav- 
eled, and,  having  traveled,  have  recounted 
their  adventures.  The  two  things  go  to- 
gether, and  are  alike  inevitable.  And  the 
thing  that  hath  been,  it  is  that  which  shall 
be.  Some  authors  travel  in  other  men's 
books;    some  travel  in  the  outward  and 


THE   TRAVELER'S   NOTE-BOOK    323 

literal  sense  of  the  word;  and  both  tell  as 
good  a  story  as  they  can  of  the  wonders 
they  have  seen.  It  is  only  here  and  there 
a  philosopher  who  can  sit  at  home  and  spin 
his  web  out  of  his  own  insides.  Thoreau 
delighted  to  talk  as  if  Concord  were  the 
centre  and  sum  of  the  world.  Everything 
grew  there,  everything  happened  there. 
Why  should  a  Concord  man  ever  stir  be- 
yond the  town  limits  .^  Sure  enough!  And 
yet  what  are  Thoreau 's  books  but  records 
of  his  journeys  :  "A  Week  on  the  Con- 
cord and  Merrimack  Rivers ; "  "The  Maine 
Woods ; "  "  Cape  Cod ; "  "  A  Yankee  in  Can- 
ada;" "Excursions."  With  him,  as  with 
the  rest  of  us,  it  was  the  volume  he  had 
just  read  that  he  liked  to  talk  about;  it 
was  the  country  he  had  just  seen  that  his 
pen  naturally  busied  itself  with  describing. 
Even  his  one  Concord  book  is  really  a 
book  of  travels.  To  write  it  he  went  into 
camp,  that  he  might  study  the  world  on  its 
off  side,  as  it  were,  and  feel  his  life  new. 

In  other  words,  for  here  we  come  to  the 
pith  of  the  matter,  it  is  the  fresh  impres- 
sion that  is  vivid,  and  therefore  will  have 
itself  expressed.    We  may  almost  say  that 


324         FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

it  is  the  only  thing  that  can  be  expressed. 
This  is  what  Bagehot  had  in  mind.  "  Those 
who  know  a  place  or  a  person  best,"  he 
said,  "  are  not  those  most  likely  to  describe 
it  best;  their  knowledge  is  so  familiar  that 
they  cannot  bring  it  out  in  words."  And 
this  truth,  partial  though  it  be,  and,  like 
all  truth,  liable  to  misunderstanding  and 
abuse,  is  the  scribbling  tourist's  encourage- 
ment, and,  if  he  be  supposed  to  need  it,  his 
perennial  justification. 

More  than  one  scholar  has  failed  to  pro- 
duce the  great  work  that  was  expected  of 
him,  —  that  he  of  all  men  seemed  elected 
to  produce,  —  simply  because  he  put  off 
the  doing  of  it  till  his  knowledge  should 
be  something  like  complete.  So  monumen- 
tal a  structure  could  not  be  too  carefully 
prepared  for,  he  thought :  a  conscientious- 
ness most  scholarly  and  honorable,  but 
deadly  in  its  result ;  for  by  the  time  he  had 
laid  in  his  stores,  he  had  lost  the  freshness 
of  his  enthusiasm;  a  palsy  had  stricken 
his  pen;  and  by  and  by  the  night  came, 
and  his  knowledge  perished  with  him. 

Writers  of  travels,  whatever  their  short- 
comings, fall  into  no  error  of  this  kind. 


THE    TRAVELER'S   NOTE-BOOK    325 

They  strike  while  the  iron  is  hot;  and 
whether  their  subject  be  Africa  or  Amer- 
ica, that  is  the  true  method.  The  value  of 
such  literature  depends  on  the  observer's 
alertness,  fairness,  good  sense,  and  general 
competency,  rather  than  upon  the  length 
and  leisureliness  of  his  journey.  Time  of 
itself  never  did  much  for  a  blind  man's 
vision;  and  to  come  back  to  our  English- 
man, he  may  run  through  America  in  a 
month,  or  spend  a  year  in  his  note-taking, 
and  in  either  event  he  will  discover  only 
what  he  came  prepared  to  discover.  If  the 
photographic  plate  is  sensitive  enough,  it 
may  need  but  the  briefest  exposure.  And 
anyhow,  let  the  picture  turn  out  never  so 
badly,  no  irreparable  harm  is  done.  The 
object  itself  is  not  altered  because  its  por- 
trait is  drawn  awry.  What  we  have  to 
dread  is  not  the  foreigner's  unfair  opinion 
of  us,  but  our  unfair  opinion  of  the  for- 
eigner. It  is  our  own  thoughts  that  do  us 
injury,  not  other  men's  thoughts  about  us. 
And  if  this  be  too  rare  an  atmosphere  for 
comfortable  every-day  breathing,  we  may 
come  at  a  similar  result  on  lower  ground. 
Who  are  we,  that  we  should  be  treated 


326         FRIENDS   ON   THE    SHELF 

better  than  the  rest  of  the  world?  Must 
our  feelings  never  be  hurt,  because  we  are 
Americans  ?  Have  we  never  learned  that 
it  is  a  man's  part  to  be  thankful  for  intelli- 
gent and  friendly  criticism,  and  to  bear  all 
other  in  silence  ? 

Let  visitors  to  "the  States,"  then,  be  "im- 
pressed;" and  let  them  print  their  impres- 
sions, the  more  the  better.  Some  of  them 
will  be  shallow,  some  of  them  unkindly  and 
prejudiced,  some,  perhaps,  ignorantly  and 
foolishly  eulogistic.  We  shall  be  blamed 
for  faults  that  are  beyond  our  mending, 
and  praised  for  virtues  that  were  never 
ours, — if  such  virtues  there  be.  At  best, 
the  criticism  and  the  comment  will  fall 
a  little  short  of  inerrancy;  for  perfection 
is  one  of  the  lost  arts,  even  in  England; 
but  in  the  sum  many  true  things  will  be 
said,  and  in  the  end  the  cause  of  truth 
will  be  forwarded ;  and  possibly,  if  a  thou- 
sand English  pens  are  thus  employed, 
one  of  them  may  happen  to  make  an 
immortal  picture  of  the  Great  Republic 
as  it  now  is,  and  as  it  will  not  be,  for 
better  or  worse,  a  hundred  years  hence. 
Thus  it  is,  at  any  rate,  by  one  lucky  experi- 


THE   TRAVELER'S    NOTE-BOOK    327 

menter  out  of  many,  that  immortal  work 
is  done. 

Some  critics,  it  is  true,  would  have  lit- 
erature, even  current  literature,  to  consist 
solely  of  such  happy  strokes.  Let  no  man 
write  anything  till  he  can  write  a  master- 
piece, they  say.  Yes,  and  let  no  boy  go 
near  the  water  till  he  has  learned  to  swim; 
and  since  crows  have  waxed  destructive, 
let  cornfields  be  planted  hereafter  with 
no  outside  rows;  and  lest  malarial  fevers 
should  make  an  end  of  the  human  race, 
let  all  plains  and  valleys  be  filled  up,  and 
nothing  remain  but  mountains.  In  short, 
seeing  that  failure  has  been  the  rule  hith- 
erto, let  us  abolish  rules,  and  get  on  with 
exceptions  alone ;  a  condition  of  things 
curiously  prefigured  in  certain  Grammars 
of  the  Latin  Language,  of  a  kind  still  sor- 
rowfully remembered  by  elderly  people. 
A  fine  economy,  surely,  and  well  worth 
thinking  about.  But  for  the  time  being,  till 
dreams  become  substantial,  this  present 
evil  world,  as  we  reverently  call  it,  remem- 
bering its  Creator,  must  be  suffered  to  jog 
along  in  its  ancient,  expensive,  wasteful- 
seeming,  happy-go-lucky,  highly-exception- 


328         FRIENDS    ON   THE   SHELF 

able  manner:  a  million  seeds,  and  one  tree; 
a  million  books,  and  one  chef-d'oeuvre. 
Classics  are  not  yet  produced  of  set  pur- 
pose, nor  do  tliey  make  their  advent  in 
royal  isolation,  starred  and  wearing  the 
laurel.  They  come,  as  was  said  just  now, 
with  the  crowd,  the  "spawn  of  the  press," 
if  they  come  at  all,  and  are  only  sifted  out 
by  the  slow  hand  of  time.  And  meanwhile 
their  humbler  fellows,  missing  of  immor- 
tality, may  nevertheless  have  their  day  and 
serve  their  turn.  Readers,  fortunately  or 
unfortunately,  are  of  many  grades,  and 
even  the  wisest  of  them  —  in  some  unwiser 
but  not  infrequent  mood  —  desire  not  a 
classic,  but  something  a  shade  less  excel- 
lent. "There  is  no  book  that  is  acceptable, 
unless  at  certain  seasons."  So  said  Mil- 
ton; and  the  saying  is  true, even  of  "Par- 
adise Lost."  In  the  great  sea  of  literature 
there  is  room  both  for  the  big  fish  and  for 
"the  other  fry."  Let  us  be  thankful;  and 
if  we  are  scribblers,  by  nature  or  by  con- 
ceit, let  us  scribble  on. 


CONCERNING  THE  LACK   OF  AN 
AMERICAN  LITERATURE 


CONCERNING  THE  LACK  OF  AN 
AMERICAN    LITERATURE 

"Writers  who  have  no  past  are  pretty  sure  of  having 
no  future."  —  Lowell. 

It  is  an  old  story  that  the  people  of  the 
United  States  have  been  slow  in  achieving 
their  intellectual  independence.  The  Brit- 
ish yoke  has  remained  upon  our  minds, 
though  we  have  cast  it  off  our  necks.  Our 
literary  men,  especially,  have  deferred  to 
English  models  and  English  ideas.  So  we 
have  been  told  till  the  tale  has  become 
monotonous. 

What  everybody  says  must  be  true  — 
perhaps;  but  even  so,  there  maybe  some- 
thing to  offer  on  the  other  side,  or  by 
way  of  extenuation,  although  the  man  who 
should  venture  to  offer  it  —  such  is  the 
peculiarity  of  the  case  and  the  perversity 
of  human  nature  —  might  find  himself  ac- 
counted unpatriotic  for  coming  to  the 
defense  of  his  own  countrymen. 

In  times  past,  assuredly,  whatever  may 


FRIENDS   ON   THE   SHELF 

be  true  now,  the  condition  of  things  so 
mucli  complained  of  was  little  reprehen- 
sible. Good  or  bad,  it  was  nothing  more 
than  was  to  have  been  expected  as  cir- 
cumstances then  were.  We  had  been 
English  to  begin  with,  and,  for  better  or 
worse,  the  English  nature  is  not  of  a  sort 
to  be  put  off  with  a  turn  of  the  hand,  at 
the  signing  of  a  political  document.  It 
is  self-evident,  also,  that  in  the  world  of 
ideas  every  people,  whether  it  will  or  no, 
must  live  largely  upon  its  ancestry.  The 
utmost  that  any  generation  can  hope  to 
do  is  to  contribute  its  mite  to  the  intel- 
lectual tradition.  The  better  part  of  its 
reading  must  be  out  of  books  that  its  pre- 
decessors have  sifted  from  the  mass  and 
handed  down.  If  it  adds  a  few  of  its  own 
—  two  or  three,  by  good  luck  —  to  the 
permanent  literature  of  the  race,  it  does 
all  that  can  reasonably  be  demanded  of 
it.  And  even  so  much  as  this  was  hardly 
to  be  looked  for  from  the  American  people 
during  its  colonial  period  and  for  some 
decades  afterwards,  with  a  wilderness  to  be 
subdued,  savage  neighbors  to  be  held  in 
check,  and  all  the  machinery  of  civiliza- 


LACK  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE    333 

tion  to  be  newly  set  up.  Books  are  a  record 
and  criticism  of  life,  and  those  to  whom 
life  itself  is  an  absorbing  occupation  are  not 
likely,  unless  they  are  almost  insanely  in- 
tellectual, to  spend  any  very  considerable 
share  of  their  days  in  work  of  a  secondary 
and  postponable  character.  Life  is  more 
than  criticism,  and  the  best  and  greatest 
people  are  those  whose  deeds  give  other 
people  something  to  write  about.  It  is 
not  to  be  wondered  at,  therefore,  if  Ameri- 
can books  of  a  kind  to  be  called  litera- 
ture were  slow  in  coming ;  and  we  may 
confess  without  shame  that  up  to  the  year 
1820  or  thereabouts  —  say  till  the  advent 
of  Irving  and  Cooper — the  people  of  this 
country,  if  they  read  anything  better  than 
sermons  and  almanacs,  were  obliged  to 
depend  chiefly  upon  foreign  authors.  To 
which  confession  it  may  be  added,  equally 
without  shame,  that  even  the  works  of 
Cooper  and  Irving  were  scarcely  sufficient 
of  themselves  to  satisfy  for  many  years 
together  the  cravings  of  eager  and  seri- 
ous minds.  At  all  times  and  in  all  coun- 
tries, such  minds,  with  the  best  will  in 
the   world   to  be  loyal  to  their  own  day, 


334         FRIENDS   ON   THE    SHELF 

have  been  obliged  to  look  mainly  to  old 
books. 

About  the  past,  then,  we  need  not  spend 
time  in  mourning.  If  we  play  our  part  as 
well  as  the  fathers  played  theirs,  we  shall 
have  no  great  cause  to  blush.  Since  their 
day,  what  with  Irving  and  Cooper  and  their 
contemporaries  and  successors,  there  has 
been  no  dearth  of  books  written  on  this 
side  of  the  water;  but  the  complaint  is 
still  rife  that  we  have  little  or  nothing  in 
the  way  of  a  national  literature:  by  which 
it  is  meant,  apparently,  that  our  writers 
are  not  yet  Americans,  or  do  not  succeed 
in  expressing  the  national  spirit.  Only  the 
other  day,  a  critic,  discoursing  on  "the 
conservatism  and  timidity  of  our  litera- 
ture," charged  it  against  Lowell  that  "in 
his  habits  of  writing  he  continued  Eng- 
lish tradition,"  whatever  that  may  mean. 
"Our  best  scholar"  allowed  his  real  self 
to  speak  but  twice,  we  are  given  to  under- 
stand; then  he  spoke  in  dialect.  His 
"Commemoration  Ode"  was  a  splendid 
failure,  because  it  was  "  imitative  and  secon- 
dary." Wliether  it,  too,  should  have  been 
written  in  dialect,  we  are  not  informed ;  but 


LACK  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE    335 

it  appears  to  be  taken  for  granted  that  its 
failure,  if  it  was  a  failure,  came,  not  from 
lack  of  genius  or  inspiration,  but  from  de- 
ference to  foreign  models.  One  cannot  help 
wondering  what  Lowell  himself  would  have 
said  to  such  a  criticism:  that  he  wrote  in 
English  and  like  an  Englishman  because 
he  dared  not  write  in  his  own  tongue  and  in 
his  own  way.  When  a  Scotchman  compli- 
mented him  upon  his  English,  —  "so  like 
a  native's,"  — and  asked  him  bluntly  where 
he  got  it,  he  answered  with  equal  bluntness, 
in  the  words  of  the  old  song,  — 

" '  I  got  it  in  my  mither's  wame.'  " 

Yet  Lowell,  who  spoke  but  twice  in  his 
own  character,  seems  to  have  done  better 
than  most  of  his  fellows;  for  he  and  Curtis 
are  the  only  men  of  letters  to  find  a  place 
in  a  recent  "Calendar  of  Great  Ameri- 
cans." All  their  contemporaries  and  pre- 
decessors were  either  not  great,  or  else 
were  something  other  than  American, 
—  cosmopolitan,  provincial,  or  English. 
Irving,  Cooper,  Poe,  Bryant,  Hawthorne, 
Longfellow,  Emerson,  Whittier,  Holmes, 
Prescott,  Motley,  Bancroft,   Parkman,  — 


336         FRIENDS    ON    THE    SHELF 

not  one  of  these  will  bear  the  test.  As  for 
Emerson,  he  is  ruled  out  by  name,  because 
he  was  the  "author  of  such  thought  as 
might  have  been  native  to  any  clime."  He 
is  of  the  world,  and  therefore  not  American. 
It  seems  a  hard  judgment  that  the  man 
who  wrote  "The  Fortune  of  the  Republic," 
"The  Young  American,"  and  the  "Con- 
cord Hymn,"  —  the  man  of  whom  it  was 
recently  said,  so  finely  and  so  truly,  that 
"he  sent  ten  thousand  sons  to  the  war,"  — 
should  find  himself  at  this  late  hour  a  man 
without  a  country.  On  such  terms  it  is 
doubtful  praise  to  be  called  a  cosmopoli- 
tan ;  and  in  view  of  such  a  ruling  it  becomes 
evident  that  the  exact  nature  of  American- 
ism as  a  literary  quality  is  yet  to  be  defined. 
Lowell's  attempt  in  that  direction,  by-the- 
bye,  is  probably  among  the  best.  An  Ameri- 
can, according  to  Lowell's  idea  of  him,  — 
so  Mr.  James  says,  —  was  a  man  at  once 
fresh  and  ripe. 

Wlien  it  comes  to  practice,  however,  there 
is  one  American  poet  whose  literary  pa- 
triotism was  never  called  in  question.  The 
reference  is  of  course  to  Wliitman.  Listen 
to  him,  as  he  appeals  to  whoever  "would 


LACK  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE    337 

assume  a  place  to  teach  or  be  a  poet  here 
in  the  States:"  — 

"Who  are  you  indeed  who  would  talk  or  sing  to  America  ? 

Have  you  studied  out  the  land,  its  idioms  and  men? 

Have  you  learned  the  physiology,  phrenology,  politics, 
geography,  pride,  freedom,  friendship  of  the  land  ? 
its  substratums  and  objects  ? 

Have  you  considered  the  organic  compact  of  the  first  day 
of  the  first  year  of  Independence,  signed  by  the 
Commissioners,  ratified  by  the  States,  and  read 
by  Washington  at  the  head  of  the  army  ? 

Have  you  possessed  yourself  of  the  Federal  Constitution  ? 

Do  you  see  who  have  left  all  feudal  processes  and  poems 
behind  them,  and  assumed  the  poems  and  pro- 
cesses of  Democracy?" 

"Conservatism  and  timidity"!  Here  is 
one  man,  at  all  events,  who  is  not  to  be  ac- 
cused of  "continuing  English  tradition." 
He,  if  nobody  else,  breathes  a  "haughty  de- 
fiance of  the  Year  One."  He  may  or  may 
not  be  "ripe;"  he  certainly  is  "fresh."  If 
there  be  some  who  fail  to  enjoy  his  verse, 
there  can  be  none  who  do  not  admire  his 
courage. 

But  surely  it  was  not  to  be  insisted  upon, 
nor  even  expected,  that  all  American  au- 
thors  should   break   away  thus   suddenly 


338         FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

and  completely  from  the  past.  Perhaps  it 
was  not  even  to  be  desired :  partly  because 
variety  is  better  than  the  best  of  sameness, 
and  partly  because  so  abrupt  a  change 
might  in  the  long  run  have  hindered  our 
emancipation.  Some  readers  would  have 
been  puzzled,  others  would  have  been  of- 
fended. Here  and  there  one,  at  least,  would 
have  been  ready  to  say,  with  Wordsworth, — 

"Me  this  unchartered  freedom  tires." 

Little  by  little  a  reaction  would  have  been 
produced,  the  "substratums  and  objects" 
of  the  land  would  have  suffered  disastrous 
eclipse,  "feudal  processes  and  poems" 
would  have  come  in  like  a  flood,  and  the 
last  state  of  the  national  mind  would  have 
been  worse  than  the  first. 

Nor  can  this  extreme  of  revolt,  or  any 
approach  to  it,  be  thought  necessary  to 
constitute  an  American  writer.  "Ameri- 
can" and  "rebel"  are  not  synonymous  at 
this  hour  of  the  day.  American  literature, 
if  we  may  assert  our  American  right  to 
speak  a  truism  roundly,  is  literature  writ- 
ten by  Americans;  that  is  to  say,  by  the 
people  of  the  United  States.    In  its  sub- 


LACK  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE    339 

ject  it  may  be  old  or  new,  domestic  or 
foreign;  it  may  be  written  in  dialect,  — 
sometimes  called  American,  —  or  in  Eng- 
lish; in  any  case,  if  it  is  literature  at  all, 
it  is  American  literature.  And  since  there 
is  already  a  body  of  such  writing,  we  may 
venture  upon  another  capital  letter,  by  the 
compositor's  leave,  and  speak  of  it  —  still 
modestly,  and  remembering  its  youth  — 
as  American  Literature.  For  youthful  it 
is,  in  the  nature  of  the  case,  with  its  char- 
acter but  imperfectly  formed,  and  its  full 
share  of  juvenile  foibles;  still  showing,  as 
is  inevitable  and  not  discreditable,  abun- 
dant traces  of  its  English  origin. 

Thus  far,  it  must  be  owned,  it  can  boast 
little  or  no  representation  among  the  su- 
premely great  of  the  earth.  The  genius  of 
a  new  country  produces  men  of  action 
rather  than  poets  and  philosophers.  Wash- 
ington and  Lincoln  are  names  to  shine 
in  any  company,  but  as  yet  the  roll  of 
American  authors  contains  few  Homers 
and  Shakespeares,  and  no  great  number 
of  Dantes  and  Miltons.  Such  as  they  are, 
however,  they  are  our  own,  and  though  in 
some  cases  we  might  have  wished  them 


340         FRIENDS    ON   THE    SHELF 

more  "distinctively  American,"  we  need 
not  be  in  haste  on  that  account  to  tag 
them  with  a  foreign  label.  Neither  need 
we  delude  ourselves  with  the  notion  that 
they  might  have  been  transcendent  gen- 
iuses, all  of  them,  had  they  but  stood  up 
resolutely  against  the  English  tradition. 
How  to  become  a  genius  is  one  of  the  hard 
problems.  There  is  no  likelihood  that  it 
can  be  solved  by  any  process  of  intellectual 
jingoism.  Tlie  secret  may  consist  partly  in 
being  one's  self;  pretty  certainly  it  does  not 
consist  in  being  different  from  somebody 
else.  Between  imitation  and  a  set  attempt 
to  avoid  imitation  there  is  not  so  very  much 
to  choose.  Either  of  them  stamps  the  work 
as  secondary.  As  for  Homers  and  Shake- 
speares,  we  may  remember  for  our  comfort 
that  names  like  these  are  not  to  be  found, 
in  any  country,  among  the  living:  they 
never  have  been.* 

For  our  comfort,  too,  though  not  in  the 
every-day  sense  of  that  word,  we  do  well 

'■  According  to  an  eminent  French  critic,  M.  de  Wyzewa,  the 
United  States  still  has  (since  Whitman's  death,  he  means  to  say) 
two  poets,  —  Mr.  Merril  and  Mr.  Griffin.  "Only  two"  is  the 
critic's  phrase,  but  the  adverb  need  not  disturb  us.  A  busy  people 
who  have  two  poets  at  once  may  count  themselves  rich. 


LACK  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE    341 

to  remind  ourselves  that  as  the  greatness 
of  our  American  authors  is  but  relative, 
so  is  the  newness  of  our  American  spirit. 
All  that  is  called  new  is  born  of  the  old, 
and  is  itself  in  part  old.  The  movement  of 
history  is  not  by  successive  creations  of 
something  out  of  nothing,  but  by  the  devel- 
opment of  one  thing  from  another;  and 
whether  we  like  to  believe  it  or  not,  this 
that  we  call  the  American  idea  stands 
within  the  general  law :  it  has  been  evolved, 
or  rather  it  is  being  evolved,  out  of  what 
was  before  it.  The  public  mind,  stirred 
by  patriotic  impulses  and  restive  under 
criticism,  may  clamor  for  originality,  mean- 
ing by  that  absolute  novelty,  and  North, 
South,  East,  and  West  may  exhaust  them- 
selves to  answer  the  appeal  :  w^e  shall 
never  see  an  absolutely  new  book,  be  it  the 
"great  American  novel"  or  anything  else. 
As  time  goes  on,  we  shall  have,  by  the  slow 
processes  of  nature,  a  literature  more  and 
more  distinctive,  more  and  more  indepen- 
dent, and  more  and  more  unlike  the  Eng- 
lish, more  and  more  American;  but  to  the 
end  its  originality,  like  that  of  all  literature, 
will  be  but  relative.    Though  men  cross  the 


342         FRIENDS   ON  THE   SHELF 

sea,  they  can  never  escape  the  spirit  of 
their  forerunners.  Our  very  rebelHousness 
against  English  domination  is  an  EngHsh 
trait.  The  great  American  book,  when  it 
comes,  will  not  spring  from  virgin  soil,  but 
from  seed,  and  the  seed  will  have  had  an 
age-long  ancestry.  "Works  proceed  from 
works,"  says  a  learned  French  critic;  and 
the  most  searching  of  American  critics  had 
something  of  the  same  thought  in  mind 
when  he  wrote,  fifty  years  ago,  in  response 
to  inquiries  "in  Cambridge  orations  and 
elsewhere"  for  "that  great  absentee,"  an 
American  literature,  "A  literature  is  no 
man's  private  concern,  but  a  secular  and 
generic  result." 

Wliat  then  ?  Shall  we  cease  effort,  and 
leave  it  to  blind  law  to  work  out  for  us 
our  intellectual  salvation .?  That  would 
be  childish.  Because  one  thing  is  true,  it 
does  not  follow  that  another  and  seemingly 
contradictory  thing  may  not  be  true  like- 
wise. The  same  Emerson  who  spoke  of  lit- 
erature as  a  "generic  result,"  —  a  word 
so  anticipatory  of  later  thought  as  to  seem 
like  a  flash  of  genius,  —  and  therefore  "no 
man's   private  concern,"  was   never  done 


LACK  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE    343 

with  proclaiming  the  power  of  the  individ- 
ual soul  and  the  omnipotence  of  individual 
faith.  He  never  scolded  his  countrymen; 
he  cherished  no  illusion  about  the  ability  of 
the  American  people  or  any  other  to  hurry 
the  accomplishment  of  a  "secular  result;" 
but  he,  more  than  all  others  combined, 
enforced  the  duty  of  American  scholars  to 
free  themselves  from  the  swaddling-clothes 
of  tradition;  to  live  in  the  present,  think 
in  the  present,  believe  in  the  present,  and 
speak  always  their  own  word.  And  the 
French  critic  just  now  quoted,  so  modern 
in  his  point  of  view,  so  very  different  in 
many  respects  from  Emerson,  —  though 
Emerson,  too,  believed  the  laws  and  powers 
of  the  intellect  to  be  "facts  in  a  natural 
history,"  and  so  "objects  of  science,"  — 
was  quoted  but  in  part.  "In  literature  as 
in  art,"  he  says,  "the  great  operative  cause 
—  after  the  influence  of  individuality  —  is 
that  of  works  upon  works."  The  words  are 
those  of  M.  Brunetiere,  who,  in  his  attempt 
to  apply  to  literary  criticism  the  methods 
of  natural  science,  has  seemed  sometimes 
to  allow  more  than  enough  to  the  power  of 
things  over  thought;  yet  he,  too,  treating 


344         FRIENDS  ON  THE   SHELF 

of  the  evolution  of  literary  forms,  gives  the 
first  place  in  that  evolution,  not  to  changed 
conditions,  nor  to  the  germinal  force  of 
great  models,  nor  to  the  "  moment,"  a  word 
on  which  he  greatly  insists,  but  to  the  power 
of  the  individual. 

And  where  ought  this  power  of  the  in- 
dividual to  be  quickly  and  strongly  felt,  if 
not  in  a  democracy  and  in  a  new  world  ? 

Like  many  other  good  things,  never- 
theless, individuality,  though  it  may  pro- 
perly be  sought,  is  not  to  be  gone  after 
too  directly,  —  as  if  it  could  be  carried 
by  assault.  Originality  has  often  suffered 
violence,  it  is  true,  but  the  violent  have 
never  taken  it  by  force.  We  are  not  to  hope 
for  intellectual  life  by  any  process  of  spon- 
taneous generation;  nor  are  we  to  dread 
abjectly  the  influence  of  other  minds  over 
our  own.  Individuality  is  a  gift  rarely  lost, 
except  by  those  who  lose  it  before  they  are 
born.  Franklin,  it  is  universally  agreed, 
was  an  American  of  the  most  pronounced 
type,  one  of  our  greatest  and  most  origi- 
nal men.  His  style,  as  Mr.  James  says 
of  Lowell's,  was  "an  indefeasible  part  of 
him;"  yet  all  the   world  knows  iiiat  he 


LACK  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE    345 

formed  it,  or  believed  that  he  formed  it,  by 
a  studious  imitation  of  Addison.  Origi- 
nality is  theirs  to  whom  it  is  given.  With  it 
a  man  may  drench  himself  in  the  wisdom 
of  the  ages,  and  take  no  harm;  without  it 
he  may  eschew  books  never  so  jealously, 
and  look  into  his  own  heart  with  never  so 
complete  a  faith,  and  come  to  no  good. 

All  of  which  is  not  to  say  that  a  scholar 
may  not  occupy  himself  too  much  with  the 
thoughts  of  others  to  the  neglect  of  his  own, 
or  that  Americans  as  a  people  may  not 
defer  unreasonably  to  foreign  standards. 
Between  the  two  extremes,  excessive  depen- 
dence upon  tradition  and  a  too  exclusive 
confidence  in  one's  own  genius,  there  is  a 
middle  course.  If  we  cannot  find  it,  then 
we  are  not  yet  ripe  for  a  great  national  lit- 
erature, which  must  be  the  result  of  the 
old  culture  bestowed  upon  new  soil  in  a 
new  time  and  under  new  conditions. 


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